“Changed it how?” Nico asked, eyeing his grandfather warily. Leopold steadfastly refused to meet his gaze, instead keeping his eyes trained on the gold swirls on the area rug beneath his feet.
“You have to understand... once I’m gone, you’ll be alone. You’ll have no family.” Leopold’s voice shook slightly. “I don’t want that for you. I don’t want you to be completely alone, with no one to support you. With no one to love you.”
“Grandad, I have friends... colleagues...”
“It’s not the same,” Leopold’s head snapped up, his eyes sparking with their old fire. “It’s not the same at all. I had eight years with my Aline, five of them as man and wife, and they were the happiest years of my life.”
Nico had never known his grandmother, who had died due to complications from childbirth when his father was only four. The baby, a girl named Catherine, had also died. His grandfather had never remarried, and never had so much as dated, so far as Nico was aware.
“I made a lot of mistakes after Aline died,” his grandfather continued, his shoulders drooping. “I threw myself into work. I didn’t have my wife anymore so I dedicated myself to making Vannevar a success.”
Nico knew his grandfather had started the company shortly after his marriage, and had named it after himself and his wife, whose maiden name had been Evariste.
“I should have dedicated myself to your father instead,” Leopold said. His hands shook as he gripped his knees and swayed slightly. “I—” His face went white, and Nico sprang to his feet.
“Granddad!” He whipped his cell phone out of his pocket, poised to call 911, but his grandfather held up a hand.
“I’ll have some juice, if you don’t mind.”
Nico loped over to the mini-fridge and grabbed a small carton of orange juice. He quickly popped it open and rushed it over to his grandfather.
Leopold drank, and seemed to steady a few minutes later.
“Low blood sugar is apparently a side effect,” he explained, polishing off the carton. Some color had come back into his cheeks, and his hands had stopped shaking, so Nico cautiously sat down again.
“As I was saying,” Leopold resumed, “I sent your father to boarding school when he was very young. I see now that it was a mistake. He interpreted it as abandonment, and in a way I guess it was.” He turned the empty orange juice carton over and over in his hands.
“I told myself it would be better for him to have a stable environment with a regular routine. In reality, I wanted to work sixteen hours a day without the guilt of knowing there was a child waiting for me to come home. I was selfish, and Gerard paid the price.”
Nico squirmed slightly. He *hated* talking about his father. He especially hated feeling a faint stab of sympathy for him. He’d never known—had never cared to know—what Jerry Vann’s early years had been like. He’d assumed that as the heir to the Vannevar fortune, he’d been a pampered, spoiled boy who’d turned into an entitled, egotistical man.
“I don’t understand what that has to do with me,” Nico murmured.
“I see so much of myself in you,” Leopold said, his voice reedy with emotion.
Nico had to swallow a gasp of amazement at the tears he saw glittering in his grandfather’s eyes. He’d *never* seen such an overt display of sentiment from his stoic Granddad.
“Too much, I’m afraid. You have the same drive and ambition that I had when I started this company—and the same tendency to let work be your preeminent obsession.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Nico said defensively. “You built this business into one of the best software companies in the world. I want to carry on your legacy.”
Leopold shook his head slightly. “This company isn’t my legacy, my boy. *You* are. And I’m very much afraid that my legacy will die with you.”
Nico flushed. He had never told Granddad of his refusal to marry or have children, but he wasn’t surprised that his grandfather had figured it out. “I... there’s still time...” he said lamely, and instantly, silently berated himself for giving false hope to a dying man.
Leopold shook his head, more firmly this time. “Time is running out, for both of us.”
“What do you mean?” Nico asked, dread curling in the pit of his stomach.
“I’ve changed my will,” his grandfather stated, neatly circling back to his original topic of conversation. He straightened his shoulders and met Nico’s eyes squarely. “You will not inherit Vannevar Software, nor will you become CEO, unless...”
Nico had to struggle to stay upright in his chair. He gripped the armrests with such force that his knuckles turned white. “Unless?” he croaked.
Leopold lifted his chin. “Unless you get married.”