One day when his father was away, Tyler decided to go into the office. The huge room was overpowering, awesome. Tyler stood there, looking at the large desk and at the huge leather chair that his father sat in. One day I’m going to sit in that chair, and I’m going to be important like Father. He moved over to the desk and examined it. There were dozens of official-looking papers on it. He moved around to the back of the desk and sat in his father’s chair. It felt wonderful. I’m important now, too!
“What the hell are you doing?”
Tyler looked up, startled. His father stood in the doorway, furious.
“Who told you you could sit behind that desk?”
The young boy was trembling. “I…I just wanted to see what it was like.…”
His father stormed over to him. “Well, you’ll never know what it’s like! Never! Now get the hell out of here and stay out!”
Tyler ran upstairs, sobbing, and his mother came to his room. She put her arms around him. “Don’t cry, darling. It’s going to be all right.”
“It’s…it’s not going to be all right,” he sobbed. “He…he hates me!”
“No. He doesn’t hate you.”
“All I did was to sit in his chair.”
“It’s his chair, darling. He doesn’t want anyone to sit in it.”
He could not stop crying. She held him close and said, “Tyler, when your father and I were married, he said he wanted me to be part of his company. He gave me one share of stock. It was kind of a family joke. I’m going to give you that share. I’ll put it in a trust for you. So now you’re part of the company, too. All right?”
There were one hundred shares of stock in Stanford Enterprises, and Tyler was now a proud owner of one share.
When Harry Stanford heard what his wife had done, he scoffed, “What the hell do you think he’s going to do with that one share? Take over the company?”
Tyler switched off the television set and sat there, adjusting to the news. He felt a deep sense of satisfaction. Traditionally, sons wanted to be successful to please their fathers. Tyler Stanford had longed to be a success so he could destroy his father.
As a child, he had a recurring dream that his father was charged with murdering his mother, and Tyler was the one who would pass sentence. I sentence you to die in the electric chair! Sometimes the dream would vary, and Tyler would sentence his father to be hanged or poisoned or shot. The dreams became almost real.
The military school he was sent to was in Mississippi, and it was four years of pure hell. Tyler hated the discipline and the rigid life-style. In his first year at school, he seriously contemplated committing suicide, and the only thing that stopped him was the determination not to give his father that satisfaction. He killed my mother. He’s not going to kill me.
It seemed to Tyler that his instructors were particularly hard on him, and he was sure his father was responsible. Tyler refused to let the school break him. Although he was forced to go home on holidays, his visits with his father grew more and more unpleasant.
His brother and sister were also home for holidays, but there was no sense of kinship. Their father had destroyed that. They were strangers to one another, waiting for the holidays to be over so they could escape.
Tyler knew that his father was a multibillionaire but that the small allowance that Tyler, Woody, and Kendall had came from their mother’s estate. As he grew older, Tyler wondered whether he was entitled to the family fortune. He was sure he and his siblings were being cheated. I need an attorney. That, of course, was out of the question, but his next thought was, I’m going to become an attorney.
When Tyler’s father heard about his son’s plans, he said, “So, you’re going to become a lawyer, huh? I suppose you think I’ll give you a job with Stanford Enterprises. Well, forget it. I wouldn’t let you within a mile of it!”