Beach Reads Box Set

by Madden-Mills, Ilsa

“Huh?” His eyes dart to his left again.

  “You’re on your own here, Rich. They’re not going to jump in and save you.” I hook my thumb at the two other men. “Tell me.”

  “It was just what we thought,” he says in a high nasally whine that makes me wish hitting people wasn’t illegal.

  “But some of ‘em left without notice, and we didn’t know if they would be back. There were plenty of people looking for places to rent so we filled the vacated units right away.” He shrugs his shoulders, eyes wide with complete bafflement at how what he’s saying could be construed as fraud and theft.

  “It says here you emptied occupied apartments and threw away personal belongings after residents were gone for less than seventy-two hours? Is that allegation true?”

  “Yes, but we thought they were moved, and we needed to turn those units over to people who wanted to pay,” he snaps defensively and wipes a drop of sweat from his forehead. I shake my head in disgust.

  I reach into my pocket and pull out my phone and text my PA Muriel that I want her to find an executive search firm. It’s time for me to build my own team. I’ve had enough indulging my uncle’s ego and treading lightly.

  “Well, we’re going to settle this case. And we’re going to make these people whole again. I want a report on the actual damage costs. They’re suing us, seeking general and pecuniary damages. Our exposure at trial is unlimited. This isn’t hard. Let’s give them a little money for their troubles and send them on their way.” I stand up to leave.

  “On Monday, I want a list—a comprehensive one—of all other potential liabilities you’re aware of. Even if it’s just a repeated customer complaint. And I don’t mean just in real estate, I mean throughout Kingdom. I also want a report of our philanthropic spending in the last ten years. I’ve received disturbing reports about our failure to support efforts that were pioneered by the Rivers family,” I chastise them.

  “The zoo doesn’t need our help any longer. Why should we continue making such huge bequests?” Eugene Kinder, the CFO, chimes in from his chair.

  I’ve never liked him.

  “That’s not for you to decide. I want those reports by the end of the week.” I stand. The four men all stand and offer their disingenuous farewells.

  “Uncle Thomas, will you walk me out?”

  I wait for him outside the door. I scan the vaulted tray ceiling. The ivory-colored, intricately-carved crown molding runs along the perimeter of the room.

  A huge crown sits in the middle of the letters R and K. Rivers Kingdom. That’s what this used to be. That’s how people have referred to us. But we have never called ourselves kings. Not until my uncle’s reign.

  He joins me in the corridor. “Yes, what would you like to discuss?” His tone is formal, his eyes wary as he waits for me to speak.

  “Poppy refuses to remain on staff as long as you or Eliza reside in Rivers House,” I inform him.

  “Well, we’ll be sad to see her go,” he says and adjusts the cuffs on his shirtsleeves.

  “She’s not going anywhere. I’ve told her that you will be moving out,” I inform him.

  His eyes nearly bug out of his head. His lips pucker like he’s sucked a lemon and he seems incapable of speech. So, I continue. “In two months, members of Denmark’s royal family will begin an extended occupancy at Rivers House. Poppy has arranged to have the house cleaned and the rooms prepared, so you and Aunt Mai will need to make other arrangements for accommodation. Eliza has already been informed that she will need to vacate the house,” I say.

  He blinks at me, his face flushed red with embarrassment. But he manages to unstick his lips, and he fixes me with a judgmental stare.

  “Aren’t these sort of details and message deliveries below your station, nephew? Or are you finding these more mundane and administrative tasks better suited to your capabilities?” he asks, smugness at his dig spreading across his withered face.

  I shake my head in disappointment. “I’m not such a slave to my pride, Uncle, that I couldn’t deliver a message that might have felt callous coming from someone who doesn’t know your personal situation,” I tell him.

  He has the decency to look ashamed.

  “Thomas, I’m not here to rub my leadership in your face,” I say to the top of his bowed head.

  “Why are you here? If not for the glory of it?” he snaps. His resentment is unmasked and fully evident in his eyes. I feel a pang of pity for him. He’s never been happy with his position in the family.

  “I’m here because it’s my responsibility to make sure that the next heir receives a legacy that’s worth preserving.”

  “As if it isn’t now? I have been a wonderful steward of this family’s interests,” he protests.

  “Ah, yes, the ever-growing pile of lawsuits from clients, customers, and partners alike say that,” I retort.

  “Of course they’re unhappy. They want us to live like we’re commoners. They want to pretend they’re our equals. I stopped that. You want to settle with these people? Why don’t they go find better jobs, so they can afford better than some flooded out apartment? We are not a charity. We are a business. If they think it’s not fit for human occupation, fine. They should go find somewhere else to live.”

  “Those apartments are not fit for any human occupation. The reports are damning. Would you want to live there?”

  “I would never be forced to make that kind of choice,” he sniffs.

  “How do you know? Don’t you have the ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and imagine what it would be like if you were in them?” I ask in muted outrage. I just don’t understand where this man’s heart is. How he and my father were both raised by my grandparents is a mystery.

  “Why would I want to imagine being them? How vulgar,” he says with a sniff of disgust.

  He’s a lost cause. I just need to completely declaw him and then I’ll strip him of all his power and mandate his retirement from the board.

  “You had fifteen years to do what you would. You sent me away. You made sure I stayed away. Perhaps you hoped I’d never come back. But here I am.”

  “Yes, here you are,” he says with barely disguised malice.

  “And here, I’ll stay.” I reinforce it with my own undisguised dislike. “You need to get used to it. Stop trying to undermine me; stop trying to make me feel like I have less right to be here than you do. I’m sorry you weren’t born first. But you need to start thinking about what your life could be,” I say with a heavy sigh.

  He doesn’t respond. He just stares straight ahead in stony silence, his face completely mottled with his pent-up anger.

  “I’ve rented you a unit in the Ivy,” I tell him weakly as I stand.

  “No, we will not stay there. It would be an insult to the family’s honor,” he blurts through woodenly clenched teeth.

  “How is it an insult?”

  “They aren’t fit to be our neighbors. They’re commoners. That land was part of our dynasty,” he spits.

  Loathing floods me in a rush of heat, and I don’t hide it when I look at him.

  “We sold them that land. We took the money from it and made ourselves rich again. They even named it after us in a show of good faith. This one-sided feud is ridiculous. I’m not going to perpetuate it anymore.”

  “My father would shudder to see how you’ve degraded our dynasty,” he says.

  I’ve had enough of his shit. I step into his personal space and look him in the eye.

  “It’s a family, not a dynasty. We are commoners. Being richer than all of the monarchies combined doesn’t make you one by de facto. And thanks to your inability to delegate or manage the business yourself, we’re perilously close to being in debt. We’re just regular people. We’ll never reclaim any of the land we sold to the Wildes. If you’d had any real sense of what we needed, you would have embraced them.”

  His face mottles, and his already thin lips compress to leave what looks like a white gash where his mouth should be. He
leans forward, as tall and straight at age eighty as he’d been at sixty.

  “We are kings in our own right.” His lips barely move. His eyes are hard and intense. “I will never embrace those bourgeoise hippies who don’t know the meaning of the word ‘empire’. The Riverses had assets on which the sun never set. The legacy you speak of is one that was built with my grandfather’s bare hands. And now you’re kicking me out so some royals can come and rent this house? Like it’s a fucking hotel?”

  “It’s certainly not a home. And I’m done wasting resources to try and make it feel like one just so you have a free place to live. I’ve offered you an option. If you’d rather use your fixed income to rent a place elsewhere, you’re welcome to do it. But, either way, you and Aunt Mai and Eliza will have to be out of here by the time the embassy tenants are moving in.”

  “I won’t go,” he says quietly.

  “Yes, you will,” I tell him.

  “No, I won’t. You’ll have to have me forcibly removed,” he says.

  “Fine, if that’s what you want,” I say with a shrug.

  “I’ll call the press,” he says, scrambling up to his feet when I start down the hall.

  “You do that. I’ll make sure to set my DVR to record your dramatic exit when Channel 11 airs the story.” I give him a two-finger salute and walk around to get back in my car.

  “You’ll ruin the family’s reputation,” he calls.

  I make my dispassion plain in my expression.

  “You’ve done a fine job of that yourself. Let me know what you’d like to do regarding leaving the house. I really have no problem being the bad guy. Everyone already thinks I’m a villain, why not get something in return for the headaches that come with that.”

  I drive down the winding road and watch the estate whiz by. When I was a boy growing up here, I never imagined I would come to think of it as a burden. A reminder of those ugly days after my father’s death and the years I spent being a punching bag for self-important assholes and an ATM to any pretty girl who would give me the time of day.

  I approach the private entrance to Rivers Wilde and the tension I’m carrying starts to dissipate.

  The gate lifts and I drive into the enclave, established by the Wildes before I was even born. This community, developed on land that was in my family for nearly one hundred years, is one of the most sought after addresses in Houston.

  The huge golf course stretches for three miles on one side of Wildewood Parkway. The grand country club rises from behind its gates like a palace. I pause at the forked road and go right to the cluster of sky-scraping residential towers called the Ivy. The glass and brick structures loom over the copse of trees planted around them. As I approach the four-lane circle drive, the guard who sits in the middle of it waves in greeting and the wrought iron gate starts its slow ascent.

  “Evening, boss,” Sammy, our valet, greets as he pulls my door open. “Your dinner’s been delivered and is ready to bring up as soon as you call.”

  “Thank you.” I grasp his outstretched hand, and he smiles when he feels the money in my hand.

  “Will you be needing your car again, or should I park her for the night?”

  I glance at the sky. It’s clear and blue, but the orange tint of the clouds signals that it’s dusk.

  “No, leave her out. I’m going out before dinner,” I tell him and head inside to change. On my way up, I call Remington Wilde. I haven’t spoken to him since that day sixteen years ago. But from what I’ve heard, even from people who don’t like him, he’s a straight shooter. An honest man and a legendary attorney already. He’s grown Wilde Law into one of the largest in the country and has made his name as Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice by the time he turned thirty. He’s back home after his grandfather’s death left him the head of the family. He’s built the Civil Rights Division of Wilde Law incredibly fast. And his firm is representing the class that’s suing us.

  “Mr. Wilde’s office,” a crisp, British accented female voice answers after the first ring.

  “Is Mr. Wilde there?”

  “He’s not available, may I take a message?” she asks immediately. Fucking gatekeepers.

  “It’s Hayes Rivers,” I say.

  There’s a beat of silence, and she says, “Mr. Rivers, please hold for Mr. Wilde,” and then there’s a beep and Remington comes on the line.

  “Who the fuck is this?” he says, just like he did that morning we met. I burst into unexpected laughter, and he joins me.

  “What’s up, kid?” he asks.

  “I’m going to give you that, because these days, I’m good with being younger than you, especially since we’re playing at the same level now,” I say.

  “You can’t even see my level.” He laughs. “You just got back into town, and you’re already talking shit,” he says.

  “Just telling you how it is,” I say.

  “You have no clue how it is. You need to come kiss the rings of the men who’ve been running Houston while you were eating pasta on a beach in Italy,” he quips. I laugh. I’d forgotten that he was a cocky asshole. I haven’t seen him again since that day we met in the clearing. But it looks like not much has changed.

  “I got your letter,” I say and don’t take his bait.

  “No hard feelings, man,” he says unapologetically. “But you’ve got to know that what Kingdom is doing is very wrong.”

  “You’re preaching to the choir. I’m not calling to give you shit. I’m about to do you a huge favor,” I tell him.

  He whistles low and long. “Well, shit. Maybe I should sue you more often.” He laughs.

  “You in the office early tomorrow?” I ask.

  “Yes,” he says.

  “I’ll come to you,” I say.

  “You better bring coffee,” he says, then hangs up.

  He’s an asshole. But I like him. And I think he’s going to be receptive to what I have to say tomorrow.

  This lawsuit, since it landed on my desk, has been nothing but a headache. But now it’s presenting me with a multitude of opportunities. I want to hold Kingdom accountable, but I know the board and executive committee will never back me on it. So, I’ll find another way. This company is rotten from the inside out. If I’ve got to kill it to save the family name, I will. What’s left isn’t worth the paper its letterhead is printed on. And I want the family foundation that I control to be the source of the Rivers family influence.

  And, I know just the lawyer to do it.

  Confidence still isn’t talking to me. She left my house that day and spent a couple of days with Cass’s family in Rivers Wilde before she left for Arkansas. She refused to see me. I followed her home, and she made it very clear I wasn’t welcome.

  It’s been a month and she’s returned every email and text I’ve sent with the same message, “I will never forgive you.”

  I know she thinks she means it.

  I mean to make sure she has no choice. Because living without her isn’t an option for me and this distance has only made that more apparent. It’s time to take control of this situation.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Kings Meet

  Hayes

  “Can I have two coffees to go? One black. One with two creams and one sugar” I ask.

  “Ah, you made up with Ms. Confidence,” the man behind the counter says brightly as he rings up my order.

  I’m in the middle of reading my email from Amelia, my new lawyer, and almost drop my phone at his words.

  This is only my second time here. I peer at his name tag that says “Lo”. “How do you know Confidence?” I ask quizzically.

  “Oh, that girl was in here making juju dolls out of stirring straws with her friend for a couple days after the storm. They were all named after you,” he says and then laughs at whatever he sees on my face.

  “What’s a juju doll?”

  “Ah, that’s what we call them in Nigeria. Maybe here you call them voodoo? Like the Cre
oles?” He laughs.

  “Oh. She made voodoo dolls and named them after me?” I ask and then glance behind me to see who was snickering.

  The group of teenage girls all look away when I scowl at them.

  “Yes, my man. My wife has been mad at me. But I’ve never had a doll made in my honor,” he says and hands me back my credit card. I’m so dazed I don’t even remember asking for it back.

  “Thank you,” I say absently and stick it back into my pocket.

  “And she took her coffee just like that, two creams, one sugar. So, I thought maybe one of those was for her.”

  “No. Unfortunately, it’s not.” And I realize that I’ve been drinking my coffee like this since I met her. All of these subtle ways I’ve started to compensate for her absence in my life. I yearn for her in a way that claws at my insides.

  “Well, we hope she forgives you soon and comes back. We liked having her around, and she loves my lattes,” he says boisterously.

  “Okay,” I say, weirded out that he even cares.

  I want to ask him to tell me more, but it’s too pathetic. So, I just smile. “Well, if she comes back, I’ll definitely make sure she has one every morning.”

  “Don’t worry, son. It’ll be okay,” he says. I raise my brows to show that I’m not as confident as he is.

  “Listen—in Rivers Wilde, we look out for each other. It’s that small-town nosiness imported to Houston. You’ll get used to it,” he says.

  “Lotanna, that line hasn’t moved since I went back to get more scones. Let the man get on with his day, cha’” a petite, dark haired, very pretty woman whose name tag says Sweet calls as she walks through the swinging doors off the side of the bakery’s main dining room.

  Her accent is identical to his, so I assume that she’s from Nigeria, too. “Sorry, Mr. Rivers. Lo loves gossip. He reads Ms. Regan’s column every morning and she wrote about you two a lot in the last month.”

  “Regan has a column?” Regan Wilde is Remi’s twin sister, and as far as I know is married with two kids and a journalist on a local channel.