Page 1 of Best Kind of Trouble
CHAPTER ONE
BRIAR
I hate conflict so much that I continued seeing a therapist I disliked for a year before I managed to ghost her after a scheduling mishap. It’s no wonder I’m twitchy as I wait for Cleet and Ross to report to my father’s office at Silver Star Brewery. It’s a Sunday, less than three weeks before Christmas, and I’m about to fire them.
Not because I want to, but because my father threatened to fire five employees if I don’t choose two to fire and do the deed myself. I tried convincing him it would be heartless to fire anyone before the holidays, and in retaliation he announced to the already-dissatisfied staff that there would be no holiday bonuses this year and it was all my fault.
He sounds like a sadist, right?
Heis, and proud of it.
According to him, his ability to “think beyond others’ feelings” is a key ingredient in his recipe for success.
I suppose he would know. My father is a wildly successful businessman who has developed and sold half a dozen businesses since I was born. Print-on-demand photo albums. Fake chicken he would never eat himself. Kombucha, right on thecusp of it becoming the next big thing. An inappropriate gummy candy he and my mom prefer not to talk about.
My mother thinks so highly of his recipe for success that she had it burned into a slab of maple. It hangs in their dining room.
Identify a rising trend
+
Think beyond others’ feelings
+
Give the people what they want
=
Success by any measure
I sit in the literal shadow of my father’s success every week when I have dinner with them, knowing his recipe will never work for me because I don’t have all of the ingredients.
Which is bad news for me, because I’m the heir apparent of Silver Star Brewery, my dad’s latest success story.
Silver Star is one of the nation’s few fully organic breweries, and we age all of our sours and some of our saisons in oak barrels in our barrel room.
It must be acknowledged that my father knows how to stand out. He always has, but none of his other business efforts have mattered to me personally.
Silver Star does.
I’ve loved this brewery from the moment my father sent me photos of the empty warehouse a few years back. I can’t explain why it stood out for me other than that the space seemed to tremble with possibilities. And now it’s a place of literal transformation, where grain, yeast, and hops are turned into gold…well, golden beer.
Even though my parents and I aren’t close, and I was busy running a small business at the time, I’d helped my dad make some important early decisions. We’d discussed how to decoratethe tasting room, which beers his brewer should focus on, and even his decision to go organic.
I’d given this brewery a piece of myself. So when my life imploded just under a year ago, my father knew exactly how to reel me into his world.
Give the people what they want.
Instead of patting me on the back and telling me it was going to be okay, he announced he’dgiveme Silver Star Brewery if I moved back home, worked at the brewery for a year as an “ideal employee,” and attended family dinners every Friday night.
“You can even bring a guest to dinner,” my father had said as if he were granting me a massive concession.
I knew there’d be dozens of strings attached, but I’d wanted it badly enough to sign on the dotted line.
Yes, there was a contract—an extensive one—and the one-year period is up in a couple of months. The brewery will finally be mine.
But my dad doesn’t believe in making anything easy. For the past few months, he’s been putting me through “Briar Boot Camp”—a series of increasingly obnoxious challenges designed to test my mettle and prepare me to run the business.
