We both exit the car and I pocket my keys, no hesitation in either of us as we walk toward the black sedan Seth has exited along with our parents. My mother is dressed in a black pantsuit, a Chanel jacket to her knees, her hair perfect, her normal air of confidence back in place as she frets over the bags that Seth is retrieving. “Don’t forget the small one in the corner,” she says, pointing to the back of the trunk. “That’s my jewelry.”
My father, in dress pants and a pullover collared shirt, scowls at her. “I don’t know why you needed jewels for my cancer treatment.”
“Because it’s going to go well and we’re going to celebrate.”
“I’ve got the bag,” Derek says, snatching it up as another sedan parks in the drive. Two men step out of the back of the vehicle before the driver pulls away.
“Nick’s men,” Seth says, setting down the bags in his hands. “I need to introduce them to the pilot.”
“I’ll get the bags on the plane,” Derek offers, and it’s then that I notice he’s wearing a black suit and a black tie, looking way too much like he’s attending a funeral.
He loads up and takes off walking, while my mother comes to me. “We’ll be back in two weeks, but if you can fly up and see us—”
“You know I can’t right now.”
“Well. I guess it’s okay. He has an eighty percent survival rate. I think that might be better than we all have on the Denver highways every day.”
The reminder that that 80 percent is really 20 percent delivers an unwelcome punch to the stomach, as does my mother hugging me and squeezing me a little too hard and long, a hint of the fragility she showed yesterday still in her energy.
“Bags loaded,” Derek announces, to then find himself in a similar embrace to the one I’ve just encountered, his eyes meeting mine, his expression as stark as the emotions I felt yesterday but refuse to allow myself today.
Which is easier said than done as my father orders my mother to the plane and steps in front of Derek and me. “I need the documentation you have on the stockholders you promised us,” I say to him.
“I have no such information.”
“You said—”
“What I say is that I expect normalcy to be restored when I return. Is that understood?”
“No,” I say. “Because your definition of normal, Pops, is what got us into this.”
“Just make sure your definition is more profitable than mine.” He turns and starts walking, and all of a sudden, I need to stop him.
“Pops!” I call out at the same moment Derek does the same, alike again. We’re both tormented. We’re both fighting a million conflicting feelings.
He halts, shoulders squaring, but he doesn’t turn. “Don’t fuck up my company while I’m gone.” He starts walking again, and as he climbs the steps, entering the plane, my fingers curl into my palms by my sides. Seth steps off the plane, giving me a two-finger wave, and then heads to his car, his business elsewhere, taking care of Ted and his family as I promised his wife yesterday, and ensuring Emily and the office staff stay safe today.
Refocused on the plane, Derek and I watch the staircase being removed, the steel door shutting. And when the engine roars and the wheels start to move, there is a finality in the air that I do not want to read into. “I don’t want to watch it take off,” Derek says, as if he senses it as well.
“Agreed,” I say, and in unison, we turn to the car, halting with the discovery of a sleek black Jaguar a short distance across the tarmac, with Adrian Martina leaning on the hood, his arms folded, his legs stretched out and crossed.
“Unless he’s here to kill me,” Derek says, “I think this calling card is for you.”
“Agreed again,” I say, fishing the keys from my pocket and handing them to him, but he closes his hand over mine.
“I didn’t pull the trigger,” he says. “But if that man ever holds a gun to your head, he will.” He releases my hand, and I don’t analyze how I feel about that warning. I am in my zone. I’m focused on my enemy, and that enemy right now is Adrian Martina.
I turn and start walking, my steps even, pace unrushed, calculated like my plans, to eradicate him from my company and our lives, until finally I’m standing in front of him. He doesn’t stand but continues to lean on the expensive car, his tan suit probably double the cost of mine, his dark hair slicked back as if he’s freshly showered.
“Two in-person visits in a week,” I say. “I’m starting to feel important to you, Adrian.”
“You’re pissed about Ted.”
“Pissed? I don’t get pissed, Adrian.”
“He’s alive.”
“And humiliated, beaten, and without a finger.”
“Someone close to me got carried away. He’s been reprimanded.”
“I’m quite clear on the way you use Ramon to do your dirty work and claim naiveté we both know you didn’t possess the day you were born.”
“He’s been reprimanded,” he repeats.
“You crossed the line, and not just with Ted. Ramon threatened to rape my mother. My mother. And you think this convinces me you want to do legitimate business with me?”
“I know nothing of this situation with your mother.”
“And that is the answer that’s supposed to convince me to forget this? My mother, Adrian. Let me be clear. I know your reach. I know the reasons people fear you. But I do not. An eye for an eye. You hurt one of mine—”
“And you visited my sister.”
“Ramon visited Emily. We aren’t even, and no one does successful business together when they are not even.”
“What do you want?”
“Ramon gone.”
“Done.”
I arch a brow. “That easily?”
“I didn’t sanction his actions. They do not please me. Nor does my desire to go legitimate please him. Now, can I trust that you’ll get my drug into that study?”
“When you get the drugs out of my facility.”
“You know my terms.” He pushes off the car. “The drugs stay until we have another distribution outlet. Otherwise my father will pay us a visit, and if you think yours is a bastard, mine’s the devil himself.” He walks to the driver’s side of the vehicle. “I’ll get rid of Ramon. Then I expect to move forward with the drug study.”
He climbs into the car and I watch him drive away, my lips curving at the sides. He played right into my hands. I’ve bought time and protection for our women. I’ve removed Ramon from our direct circle, allowing Seth to work his magic, with no path back to him or us.
I walk to the Bentley, the car my father gave me, that until this moment I’ve hated. It was bribery to get me to look the other way and forgive his many sins. Now it’s a reminder to me of everything the Brandon family was and will not be again. I’m here. I’m staying. And Adrian Martina is not. I slide into the driver’s seat, next to a brother I thought would never be shotgun to me, or me him, again.
“Well?” Derek asks.
“Ramon is gone. He’s sending him away.”
“If he agreed to that, it won’t be for long. He’ll be back.”
I start the engine, deciding that the sins of our father became the sins of my brother, regardless of Derek’s own role in his demise. My sins don’t need to become his too. I’ll keep Ramon’s fate to myself. “A little time to play a good game of poker is exactly what we need, which I’ll explain on the way to our next stop.”
“Which is where?”
“Mike Rogers’s office.”
* * *
Derek and I park in the lot in front of the all-glass mega sports complex where Mike’s pro-ball team operates. “So let me get this straight,” Derek says. “Your plan is an almost plan that’s stewing in your mind.”
“That’s how I operate,” I say. “I have something brilliant that sits just out of reach but leads me through a discovery process. It’s close. It’s really close.”
“And this discovery process tells you that we need to suck up to Mike. To t
he man who fucked our mother and is trying to fuck us.”
“That’s right.” I open the door of the Bentley and get out, typing a quick text to Emily: Parents in the air. Went as expected. Working on that plan. Let me know all is well there.
“What are you hoping to gain by doing this?” Derek presses, meeting me at the hood of the car.
“He’s been working to divide us,” I say, falling into step with him and heading toward the door. “We’re uniting and removing that option. That means he’ll make a move that shows his hand.”
My phone beeps with Emily’s reply: So calm here, I feel like I’m at the wrong place.
Satisfied she’s safe and all is well, I slide my phone back into my pocket. “It seems to me like his efforts to divide us keep him distracted and buy us time. I wrote our bylaws and they’re damn good. No move he can make will be fast or easy. I’m working toward an endgame.”
“That’s still floating around in your mind and I’m supposed to blindly follow.”
“I’m a better bet than Pops. I promise you, brother.”
We enter the lobby, where the basketball team’s logo is etched in every other tile beneath our feet, and on the front of the oval reception desk. We approach, announcing our presence. “If you could let Mike Rogers know we’re here and it’s urgent.”
“Of course,” the twentysomething woman says, dialing his number.
In all of thirty seconds, she’s on her feet, rounding the desk. “This way,” she says, indicating a hallway to our right that we quickly enter before stopping at door number one. “Mr. Rogers will be with you shortly,” the woman says, opening the door and granting us access to a tiny room with a schoolroom-style round table and wooden chairs that I suspect are used for application processing.
Derek takes a seat at the table while I lean against the wall and check my watch, setting the timer. “We wait fifteen minutes to look respectably agitated and we leave.”
“You don’t think he’s going to see us?”
“At this point. I know he’s not.”
“Then why put us in this room?”
“The shithole of a room is the telltale sign that he’s not going to see us.” I glance at my watch again. “Three minutes. Twelve more to go.” And so we wait. No words. Just Derek tapping the table incessantly, another telltale sign, this one of his nerves over a meeting that isn’t going to happen.
At exactly fifteen minutes, I lift my arm to indicate my watch, and Derek stands. “Now what?”
I push off the wall and reach into my jacket, removing two envelopes marked URGENT. “We leave him one of the two messages I’ve found always get me the attention I want. I’ll let you pick.” We step into the hallway. “Letter A says simply: IRS. Letter B says simply: Bankruptcy.”
Derek laughs. “Priceless. I choose Bankruptcy. Just thinking about how he’ll shit his pants pretty much makes my day.”
“Bankruptcy it is,” I say, sticking the IRS note back into my pocket and walking to reception.
“Please give this to Mr. Rogers, and I’d appreciate it if you read him the note inside immediately. It’s a time-sensitive legal matter.”
“Of course,” she promises, and Derek and I head for the door, exiting the building.
“How long do you think it will take for him to reply?”
“The average is the same fifteen minutes we waited,” I say, clicking the locks to the Bentley, and I’ve just opened my door when I hear, “Shane!”
At the sound of Mike’s voice, Derek and I share an amused look over the roof of the car. I check my watch. “One minute. A new record.” And proof he was lingering nearby when we were sitting in that room. I motion to the front of the car, and Derek and I come together there, sending the “united we stand” message that we came here to deliver.
Mike stalks toward us, a team logo on his collared shirt, his arms as ripped as a linebacker’s beneath the short sleeves. The scowl on his face is fitting for a football player who just got hit wrong and wants to hit back. He stops in front of us. “I knew there were problems you boys couldn’t handle, and I knew your father wasn’t on his game anymore. I’m going to petition to take over the company. Expect paperwork by Monday.” He says nothing more, turning and stalking away, his reaction bigger and better than I could have imagined it to be.
“We aren’t in bankruptcy,” I say to his back. “Not even close. We just wanted to get your attention.”
He rotates to face me, that scowl deepening, furrowing his forehead with heavy lines. “I’m still petitioning to take over the company.” He turns, and this time I let him leave.
“What the hell?” Derek demands. “Shane. This is a major problem.”
I motion to the car, where no one can observe our interactions, and the instant we’re inside, Derek is showing that reactive side of himself again. “I told you, we need to let Adrian deal with him.”
My lips curve and I look at Derek. “That plan of mine, that was out of reach, isn’t out of reach anymore. You’re right. We do need to let Adrian deal with him. And Monday, or whenever Mike attempts legal action, is when the party starts. We’ll counteroffer his takeover by offering him the pharmaceutical company, for a healthy fee, of course, that allows us to transition our business. And he’ll then inherit Adrian Martina.”
“The pharmaceutical branch is our most profitable.”
“Which is why he’ll have to pay us to take it over and pay us well.”
“That seems a little too easy and clean for what we’re dealing with here.”
“It won’t be easy. Mike won’t agree to what I’m proposing. He’ll try to take everything and I’ll have to force his hand.”
“How?”
“Aside from photos of him sleeping with the CEO’s wife, that I can spin in all kinds of ways to at least taint a judge’s opinion of him, Adrian will be in my pocket.”
“In your pocket? Doubtful. And you said you couldn’t get out. He wants you involved.”
“I’m going to be when I convince him Mike is the perfect little bitch he needs and hand him his new business partner. One he’ll want to ensure signs that deal.”
“Assuming this works, are you authorized to sign off on a deal like this in place of Pops?”
“Not unless Pops is incapacitated, and now that I let him get on the plane without coming up with this plan first, that becomes complicated. I need to get to the office, draft the paperwork, and put Seth on a plane to Germany to get his signatures.”
“Too bad your idea wasn’t a real idea until now.”
I text Seth to meet me at the office and then slide my phone back into my pocket, revving the engine. “This is going to work. I promise you, brother. We’re a few short weeks from the end.”
I pull us out of the parking spot, eager to get to work and address the legality and strategy behind this plan. Even more eager to close the book on Martina and start a real life with Emily. In fact, by the time I pull us into the office parking garage only a few minutes away, I’ve decided it’s time to look for a ring. But while I’m thinking of new beginnings for myself and Emily, Derek is brooding, and once I park in my reserved spot, he makes no attempt to exit the car. “Teresa says I’m a target for Adrian and Ramon because of her,” he says. “Not because of our business dealings.”
“She’s the sister and daughter of a drug lord,” I say. “We can remove you from her brother’s business, but I’m not sure how dating her ends well. Pops should have never sent that directive and you should never have gone.”
He looks at me. “She’s not like her family. She’s good in a way I don’t deserve, and that’s just it. Eventually she’ll figure that out, and then Adrian or Ramon will decide that I should pay for hurting her. I’ll be dead.”
“No,” I say, rejecting that idea. “There’s a way to get you out of this.”
“Really? I’m listening.”
“Give me time. We’ll figure it out.”
“In other words, your claim that I coul
d be with her was at my own risk.”
“We’re Brandons. She’s a Martina. We can’t change the blood running through our veins. I’ll negotiate your safety in the deal.”
“How?”
“I’ll figure it out.”
He reaches under the seat and lifts the gun. “And I’ll buy those bullets.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
SHANE
The minute Derek and I walk into Brandon Enterprises, he cuts right toward his office, and I cut left toward Emily’s, finding her desk empty and my father’s door open, his office dark. It’s then that I feel the punch of his absence, and when I turn around and Emily is standing in her private lobby area in front of me, I grab her, cup her head, and kiss her. It’s not until I force my mouth from hers that I realize Jessica is standing next to her.
“I take it this is going to be a closed-office kind of day,” she comments dryly. “Should I leave now?”
“It’s actually going to be a busy work day,” I say, releasing Emily. “I have some detailed contract work for us to attack with urgency.”
“Oh, my favorite,” she adds. “Are we talking one Snickers bar kind of detail or a box of chocolate survival kit?”
“Survival kit.”
“Got it,” she says. “Headed to my desk to break open the emergency drawer.” She disappears down the hall, and Emily flattens her hand on my chest, her eyes meeting mine, understanding in their depths. “I hate the empty office too. It bothers me every time I walk around the corner, but he’ll be back and barking orders at me in no time.”
She tries to sound convinced, but she fails, and deep in my gut, which never fails me, I’m not sure he’ll ever come home. “Any problems this morning?” I ask as her intercom buzzes.
“It’s been smooth sailing here,” she says, moving behind her desk and punching the intercom button while I sit on the edge facing her.
“There’s a delivery for Brandon Senior that ended up in the copy center,” the receptionist says over the intercom. “Do you want me to get it on my break?”
“No,” Emily says. “I’ll grab some coffee in a few and get it.” She releases the intercom button and refocuses on me. “How’s that plan of yours going?”