Blood risk

said.
        Tucker shook his head. "No. It's not just that. Once I'd signed the waiver and no longer had a lever to use against my father, he'd have more control over me than I want him to have. He could even cut back the allowances until I had to knuckle under and go through the charade of learning the business from him."
        "He wouldn't do that," Mellio said.
        "You're full of it," Tucker said politely, smiling.
        Mellio said, "You must hate him."
        "Not merely that; I loathe him."
        "But why?"
        "I have my reasons."
        He thought of many things, but most of all he thought of the women his father had kept, a string of mistresses which, cruelly, he hadn't hidden from his wife. In fact, he seemed to take some strange pleasure in flaunting his adultery in front of her. Tucker remembered sitting with her, once when he had come home over the holidays from the boarding school, listening to her as, hating herself, she told him about his father's women. She had been a strong family-oriented woman, and this was an attack at her base, her sacred foundation. She had huddled in upon herself and cried, silently, shaking, her face cold to his touch. If only his mother had had a bit of Elise in her, less of an old-fashioned outlook and more modern fire, she would have stood up to the old man; she would have left him. Instead, she had stayed on, unable to admit it all had gone bad. Then the cancer, the long slow hospital death, when the old man was too busy to visit her for more than an hour or two a week, her knowing that it wasn't only his financial affairs that took so much of his time.
        "Your father is a fascinating man and one of the kindest that I've ever known," Mr. Mellio said. "I can't imagine what reasons he would have given you to loathe him."
        "Then you don't know him well."
        "Perhaps I know him better than you do."
        Tucker smiled frostily. "Considering that you're a banker and that my father was always more interested in money than in his son, perhaps you do."
        For the first time the banker seemed to see beyond Tucker's facade and to catch a glimpse of the man behind it. He looked quickly down at the bare top of his massive desk, as if that single glimpse had frightened him, and he said, "What size loan were you considering?"
        "Only ten thousand," Tucker said. "I've suddenly found myself short of operating cash."
        "Collateral?" Mellio asked, looking up as his courage flooded back in the course of a conversation he must have gone through a thousand times before with a thousand different customers. Familiarity always breeds confidence, especially in men of finance.
        "My trust," Tucker said.
        "But you do not, strictly speaking, have the right to put up the trust-fund monies as collateral. Only the trust administrator can do that."
        "My father."
        "Yes."
        "Then I can put up that account full of uncollected allowances."
        "The same holds true there," Mellio said. "Until you sign for the checks, they aren't legally yours."
        Tucker sat up straight in his chair, sensing a battle of wills that he had to win. "What would you suggest I use as collateral, then?"
        "Well, you seem to be running a very profitable business," Mr. Mellio said. "You live in the style you like, without touching your inheritance, so you must have other assets."
        "Forget that," Tucker said.
        Mellio leaned back in his chair, testing the hinged backrest to its limits, looking at Michael across the curious perspective of his raised knee. It was evident that he felt in command of the situation once more. "Now, Michael, there isn't any sense in your attitude. If you'd give me a full picture of this art business of yours, initial capital and estimated income, sources and projections, we could get you a loan. We could make it a sweat loan on the power of your success thus far. And, I might add, if you'd tell your father exactly what you've been doing, he might very well be so impressed with your business acumen that he'd free your inheritance."
        "No chance," Tucker said. "My business isn't in the empire-building mold, but erratic and highly chancy. I don't attend board meetings, float stock options or employ thousands of people. My father wouldn't be impressed the way he'd have to be to give me a free hand with my inheritance."
        Mellio's voice softened into a