His Illegitimate Heir

One (#ulink_f0001763-b469-57b6-b4e7-7e06f4498678)

“You ready for this?” Jamal asked from the front seat of the limo.

Zeb Richards felt a smile pull at the corner of his mouth. “I was born ready.”

It wasn’t an exaggeration. Finally, after all these years, Zeb was coming home to claim what was rightfully his. The Beaumont Brewery had—until very recently—been owned and operated by the Beaumont family. There were a hundred twenty-five years of family history in this building—history that Zeb had been deprived of.

He was a Beaumont by blood. Hardwick Beaumont was Zeb’s father.

But he was illegitimate. As far as he knew, outside of the payoff money Hardwick had given his mother, Emily, shortly after Zeb’s birth, no one in the Beaumont family had ever acknowledged his existence.

He was tired of being ignored. More than that, he was tired of being denied his rightful place in the Beaumont family.

So he was finally taking what was rightfully his. After years of careful planning and sheer luck, the Beaumont Brewery now belonged to him.

Jamal snorted, which made Zeb look at him. Jamal Hitchens was Zeb’s right-hand man, filling out the roles of chauffeur and bodyguard—plus, he baked a damn fine chocolate chip cookie. Jamal had worked for Zeb ever since he’d blown out his knees his senior year as linebacker at the University of Georgia, but the two of them went back much farther than that.

“You sure about this?” Jamal asked. “I still think I should go in with you.”

Zeb shook his head. “No offense, but you’d just scare the hell out of them. I want my new employees intimidated, not terrified.”

Jamal met Zeb’s gaze in the rearview mirror and an unspoken understanding passed between the two men. Zeb could pull off intimidating all by himself.

With a sigh of resignation, Jamal parked in front of the corporate headquarters and came around to open Zeb’s door. Starting right now, Zeb was a Beaumont in every way that counted.

Jamal looked around as Zeb stood and straightened the cuffs on his bespoke suit. “Last chance for backup.”

“You’re not nervous, are you?” Zeb wasn’t. There was such a sense of rightness about this that he couldn’t be nervous, so he simply wasn’t.

Jamal gave him a look. “You realize you’re not going to be hailed as a hero, right? You didn’t exactly get this company in a way that most people might call ethical.”

Zeb notched an eyebrow at his oldest friend. With Jamal at his back, Zeb had gone from being the son of a hairdresser to being the sole owner of ZOLA, a private equity firm that he’d founded. He’d made his millions without a single offer of assistance from the Beaumonts.

More than that, he had proven that he was better than they were. He’d outmaneuvered and outflanked them and taken their precious brewery away from them.

But taking over the family business was something he had to do himself. “Your concern is duly noted. I’ll text you if I need backup. Otherwise, you’ll be viewing the properties?”

They needed a place to live now that they would be based in Denver. ZOLA, Zeb’s company, was still headquartered in New York—a hedge just in case his ownership of the Beaumont Brewery backfired. But buying a house here would signal to everyone that Zeb Richards wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Jamal realized he wasn’t going to win this fight. Zeb could tell by the way he straightened his shoulders. “Right, boss. Finest money can buy?”

“Always.” It didn’t really matter what the house looked like or how many bathrooms it had. All that mattered was that it was better than anyone else’s. Specifically, better than any of the other Beaumonts’. “But make sure it’s got a nice kitchen.”

Jamal smirked at that bone of friendship Zeb threw him. “Good luck.”

Zeb slid a sideways glance at Jamal. “Good luck happens when you work for it.” And Zeb? He always worked for it.

With a sense of purpose, he strode into the corporate headquarters of the Beaumont Brewery. He hadn’t called to announce his impending arrival, because he wanted to see what the employees looked like when they weren’t ready to be inspected by their new CEO.

However, he was fully aware that he was an unfamiliar African American man walking into a building as if he owned it—which he did. Surely the employees knew that Zebadiah Richards was their new boss. But how many of them would recognize him?

True to form, he got plenty of double takes as he walked through the building. One woman put her hand on her phone as he passed, as if she was going to call security. But then someone else whispered something over the edge of her cubicle wall and the woman’s eyes got very wide. Zeb notched an eyebrow at her and she pulled her hand away from her phone like it had burned her.

Silence trailed in his wake as he made his way toward the executive office. Zeb fought hard to keep a smile off his face. So they did know who he was. He appreciated employees who were up-to-date on their corporate leadership. If they recognized him, then they had also probably read the rumors about him.

Zebadiah Richards and his private equity firm bought failing companies, restructured them and sold them for profit. ZOLA had made him rich—and earned him a reputation for ruthlessness.

He would need that reputation here. Contrary to some of the rumors, he was not actually heartless. And he understood that the employees at this brewery had undergone the ouster of not one but two CEOs in less than a year. From his reports on the company’s filings, he understood that most people still missed Chadwick Beaumont, the last Beaumont to run the brewery.

Zeb had not gotten Chadwick removed—but he had taken advantage of the turmoil that the sale of the brewery to the conglomerate AllBev had caused. And when Chadwick’s temporary replacement, Ethan Logan, had failed to turn the company around fast enough, Zeb had agitated for AllBev to sell the company.

To him, of course.

But what that really meant was that he now owned a company full of employees who were scared and desperate. Employee turnover was at an all-time high. A significant percentage of top-level management had followed Chadwick Beaumont to his new company, Percheron Drafts. Many others had taken early retirement.

The employees who had survived this long were holding on by the skin of their teeth and probably had nothing left to lose. Which made them dangerous. He’d seen it before in other failing companies. Change was a constant in his world but most people hated it and if they fought against it hard enough, they could doom an entire company. When that happened, Zeb shrugged and broke the business up to be sold for its base parts. Normally, he didn’t care if that happened—so long as he made a profit, he was happy.

But like he told Jamal, he was here to stay. He was a Beaumont and this was his brewery. He cared about this place and its history because it was his history, acknowledged or not. Not that he’d wanted anyone to know that this was personal—he’d kept his quest to take what was rightfully his quiet for years. That way, no one could preempt his strikes or lock him out.

But now that he was here, he had the overwhelming urge to shout, “Look at me!” He was done being ignored by the Beaumonts and he was done pretending he wasn’t one of them.

Whispers of his arrival must have made it to the executive suite because when he rounded the corner, a plump older woman sitting behind a desk in front of what he assumed was the CEO’s office stood and swallowed nervously. “Mr. Richards,” she said in a crackly voice. “We weren’t expecting you today.”

Zeb nodded his head in acknowledgment. He didn’t explain his sudden appearance and he didn’t try to reassure her. “And you are?”

“Delores Hahn,” she said. “I’m the executive assistant to the—to you.” Her hands twisted nervously in front of her before she caught herself and stilled them. “Welcome to the Beaumont Brewery.”

Zeb almost grinned in sympathy. His assistant was in a tough spot, but she was putting on a good face. “Thank you.”

Delores cleared her throat. “Would you like a tour of the facilities?” Her voice was still a bit shaky, but she was holding it together. Zeb decided he liked Delores.

Not that he wanted her to know that right away. He was not here to make friends. He was here to run a business. “I will—after I get settled in.” Then he headed for his office.

Once inside, he shut the door behind him and leaned against it. This was really happening. After years of plotting and watching and waiting, he had the Beaumont Brewery—his birthright.

He felt like laughing at the wonder of it all. But he didn’t. For all he knew, Delores had her ear to the door, listening for any hint of what her new boss was like. Maniacal laughter was not a good first impression, no matter how justified it might be.

Instead, he pushed away from the door and surveyed his office. “Begin as you mean to go on,” Zeb reminded himself.

He’d read about this room, studied pictures of it. But he hadn’t been prepared for what it would actually feel like to walk into a piece of his family’s history—to know that he belonged here, that this was his rightful place.

The building had been constructed in the 1940s by Zeb’s grandfather John, soon after Prohibition had ended. The walls were mahogany panels that had been oiled until they gleamed. A built-in bar with a huge mirror took up the whole interior wall—and, if Zeb wasn’t mistaken, the beer was on tap.

The exterior wall was lined with windows, hung with heavy gray velvet drapes and crowned with elaborately hand-carved woodwork that told the story of the Beaumont Brewery. His grandfather had had the conference table built in the office because it was so large and the desk was built to match.

Tucked in the far corner was a grouping of two leather club chairs and a matching leather love seat. The wagon-wheel coffee table in front of the chairs was supposed to be a wheel from the wagon that his great-great-grandfather Phillipe Beaumont had driven across the Great Plains on his way to Denver to found the brewery back in the 1880s.

The whole room screamed opulence and wealth and history. Zeb’s history. This was who he was and he would be damned if he let anyone tell him it wasn’t his.