Billion Dollar Wolves: Boxset Bks 1-5

by Dee Bridgnorth

  “Okay. Let’s do that.”

  Landry smiled as he got his folder out of his backpack, but she had no doubt that this was not the last time she was going to hear about negotiating for a grade. Not the last time by far.

  Chapter Eight

  Zane was in trouble. He knew that for sure. The glare that his mother was currently leveling in his direction was epic. She wasn’t just mad. She was absolutely livid. Her cheeks were red and she almost looked as though she were trembling with rage on her tiny little stiletto heels.

  Deviating from the moment for a moment, Zane wondered in the back of his mind how in the hell anyone could walk in shoes like that. It seemed utterly impractical for so many reasons. As if his mouth had its own agenda, he couldn’t manage to stop himself from mentioning it. “So, Mother, I’ve always wondered. How is it that you can walk on those things?” He pointed to her shoes. “I’ve seen you in boots and sandals and all sorts of those random hooker-looking shoes.”

  “Excuse me?” Tisha Olivares-King was now gaping at her middle son as though she could not believe he’d just said that. “Did you say hooker-looking shoes?”

  “Well, yeah.” Zane shrugged. Did it really matter at this point? He was still standing outside Devon’s office. He needed to keep his mother occupied. This was obviously taking care of that. “You have to know that average Joe calls those five hundred dollar an hour shoes, right? You’ve heard of that, right? I think there was some kind of scale at one point. I don’t know.” Zane wondered why her face was getting pinched like that. How did it even happen? “Like every inch got you a hundred bucks an hour or something. Who knows. Some of those working girls make good money.”

  “I’m sure they do.” She turned on her very high heel and stalked off down the hallway.

  Good. Right? Had he managed to get rid of her then? Wait. Nope. She was turning around. She pointed at him and then snapped her fingers. The gesture was absolutely unmistakable as was the thought process behind it. Tisha Olivares-King was absolutely making a reference to Zane’s wolf nature and acting as though he were nothing more than a dog.

  Zane felt his humor disappearing. “Shall I wave a hundred dollar bill in front of your face to get you to fall in line?” Zane snapped at his mother. “That’s what it takes. Right? You went after Tex Johnson because he had money. Now you’re trying very hard to go after the rest of us and snatch up every cent of our inheritance. Isn’t that your goal, Mother?”

  “How. Dare. You.”

  Before Zane could even begin to verbalize an answer, Tisha had stormed back down the hall toward Zane and grabbed hold of his arm. She dragged him toward Orion’s corner office as though he were being taken to the principal’s office. Not that Zane was a stranger to such an experience. He’d spent a good portion of his school years in the stupid principal’s office. But at the moment he really had zero interest in discussing anything with his eldest brother. Orion had been a bit on the disturbed side lately. As in he’d been hitting the bottle a little more regularly than was probably good for anyone, even a shifter.

  “Orion!” Tisha used one hand to turn the knob and let herself into Orion’s office. “Orion, do you have any idea what’s going on right now…”

  But the knob did not turn. The office was locked and Tisha nearly collided with the door thanks to the fierce momentum she had going at that moment. In her surprise she dropped her grip on Zane’s arm. Trying the knob again, Tisha slammed the door with the flat of her hand.

  “Open up!” she snarled. “Orion King, you open this door right now! This instant! Don’t you dare make me go get a maintenance man with the key!”

  Zane could not stop staring at her. It was like watching insanity unfold with all of the casual nuttiness of the usual family drama. What was her problem?

  “What if he has a client in there or something?” Zane thought about all of the possibilities. “It could be a personnel meeting of some kind. He’s the head of operations, Mother. That’s kind of an important job. I know that you consider him nothing more than your lapdog, but that’s actually not the truth of it.”

  Tisha rounded on him. “You shut up.”

  “Whatever.” Zane started to walk away.

  At the last second Tisha grabbed his arm and held him in place with a shocking amount of strength. “No, uh-uh! You don’t get to do that. You’re staying right here. Make him open the door.”

  “Have you considered that he isn’t even in there?”

  “Then I want to see!”

  Zane grumbled. He was perfectly capable of getting into Orion’s office. He just didn’t want to for more than one reason. He didn’t care to let his mother know that lock picking was in his skill set. And he didn’t want to see Orion anyway. It was a double whammy as far as Zane was concerned.

  “Find a key or something. Now.” Tisha was glaring up at Zane as though she had never been his mother. The hatred in her gaze was enough to wither Zane’s heart. Or it would have if he actually cared about what she thought anymore. “You do this for me or I’m going to make sure you don’t draw a salary from here ever again.”

  Those words carried an interesting amount of weight. Zane cocked his head to one side. “You can’t do that. Dad’s will provides for my brothers and I. You don’t get a choice about it.”

  “No?” She set her chin. “Try me. I dare you.”

  She could not cut him off. In theory. That meant she could do what she wanted and then Zane could fight her about it after the fact. It would mean legal action, money spent, and time without a paycheck. So what was this little moment of rebellion worth really? How much trouble? Especially when they all knew that their mother had monkeyed with the payroll for the entire company and had stolen everyone’s wages for almost a month. She’d put them in her personal account and only their numbers-minded brother Edward had been able to figure out what was really going on and reverse that nonsense.

  Edward was gone now and Zane was on his own.

  “Fine.” He shouldered his mother out of the way. “But I’m not going to feel sorry for you if there’s something in there you really don’t want to see.”

  “Shut up and open it!”

  Zane slipped a pocket knife from his pocket. These doors were really nothing to pick as far as locks were concerned. It was actually laughable that a security solutions company that specialized in huge accounts and locking down databases and internet connections was so lax with its own internal security. Perhaps this was a statement about how much they really cared about their business.

  The lock popped and Zane heard the tumblers click inside the door handle. The whole thing sort of turned in his hand and the door fell open. Zane made a move to stand back, but he needn’t have bothered. His mother pushed past him so quickly that it nearly threw him backwards. What on earth was she taking? She wasn’t shifter. She should have been no stronger than the average human woman in her sixties. And yet sometimes Tisha Olivares-King seemed to have some kind of super strength. Deal with the devil maybe? Zane would have believed it.

  “Orion!” Tisha reached for the light and flipped it on.

  Zane snorted and lifted his hand to his nose to dull the horrible stench wafting out of the room. “Damn,” Zane muttered. “I think he’s dead, Mother. Or at least something smells dead.”

  “Shut up and help me get him up off the floor. Ugh! What is that smell!”

  “That would be vomit.” Zane grabbed Orion’s arm and hauled him up off the floor. “Looks like he puked on the floor when he rolled off his couch.”

  “Call maintenance! Wait. Go get that cleaning lady down in your brother’s office. Make her clean it up.” Tisha waved one hand with such imperial entitlement that Zane almost walked out right then. “Do it, Zane. Don’t make me threaten you again. You’re really irritating me.”

  “I’m so effing sorry,” Zane muttered. He grunted as he pushed Orion back onto the couch and then gratefully left the office.

  It was a relief to be out in the hallw
ay away from the stench. Orion’s drink of choice was Absinthe. It was the only thing strong enough to give a shifter any sort of buzz just based on sheer alcohol content.

  Zane made his way back down toward Devon’s office. He stared at the door and tried to decide if this was a good idea or not. There was no telling what was happening in there. But it was probably not exactly appropriate for the workplace. For either party involved of course.

  Knock. Knock. Knock. Zane exhaled a sigh as he paused to wait for someone to respond. “Devon? It’s Zane. I need to talk to you really quick.”

  Sounds. A crash as though something had fallen over. More noises. And finally Devon called back to Zane. “Come in. The door is unlocked now.”

  “I’m starting to get a feeling that I need to stop walking into offices altogether,” Zane muttered as he stuck his head in the doorway.

  Kami was standing across the room. She had her arms folded across her chest and she looked belligerent as hell. Great. This was going to make Zane popular. Probably not with Kami or Devon.

  “So, uh.” Devon cleared his throat a few times while he bought some time to figure out what to say. “It seems that Orion has messed his office.” Great. That made their elder brother seem like a baby that had crapped its diaper. “I mean he passed out.”

  Devon grumbled something angry. “Great. And so we need an ambulance?”

  “No. I thought Kami could call a cleaning crew.” Zane pushed the door open all the way but did not step inside the office. He didn’t want to take a chance of Kami skewering him with something like a letter opener. “It seems our brother has vomited all over the floor.”

  Kami utterly something ugly and very obviously uncomplimentary in Spanish. Devon threw her a sharp look of warning. Then Devon offered Zane one nod. “We’ll call someone.”

  “Thank you.” Zane sighed. “I’ll go back down and let Mother know.”

  Devon seemed to want to say something else, but it never came out. Zane left Devon there with Kami and returned to Orion’s office. Tisha was perched on the sofa beside her oldest son and was stroking his face with her fingertips. Why did she love him so much? Orion was an ass. He had been making it worse and worse for himself lately too.

  “It’s your fault you know,” Tisha muttered.

  Zane raised his eyebrows. “Excuse me? My fault? How do you figure that?”

  “You and all of that wolf nonsense. You should have just let the land be developed. No more land. No more worrying about wolves and shifters and all of those terrible things that remind Orion of his father and that bastard son of his—Gemini.”

  “Gemini has nothing to do with Orion’s behavior,” Zane retorted. He was tired of hearing this line too. “Orion was drinking heavily before Gemini ever came back on the scene.”

  “But Orion knew. He knew!” Tisha insisted. “He knew that Gemini was going to try and steal the company. He was trying to protect your interests.”

  “My brother has never protected anyone but himself.” Zane was not about to stand here in his brother’s office and listen to his mother try and protect her precious baby boy by blaming everyone else. “Orion is selfish and a bit on the lazy side, Mother. You can say what you want about him, but he’s looking out for number one and if you don’t leave him alone he’s going to kill himself to get away from you.”

  “Oh, no, you did not!”

  For reasons that Zane could not understand, these words inflamed his mother more than anything else had to date. Her face reddened. She shot to her feet. And she began pointing and sputtering and pointing some more as though she were about to try and zap him with her hypothetical demoness powers or something equally ridiculous.

  “You’d better calm down, Mother,” Zane said quietly. “You’ll give yourself a heart attack and then who will tell all of us that we suck so badly that even our mother hates us?”

  “Never again,” she gasped. Tisha pointed and sputtered some more before she got any traction. “You will never enter my house again. I am disowning you! You are no longer my son. You are no longer anything to me! Do not come to my house. Do not even try to walk through my door. I will throw your clothes and things out on the curb. I will put everything you own in a dumpster! I never want to see you again! Get. Out! Get! Out!”

  Zane drew back. He’d been yelled at a lot in his life. He was no stranger to making his parents so angry that they did a lot of threatening and saying things that they didn’t really mean. This was different. He could feel it. She meant it this time and suddenly Zane knew exactly what he wanted to do next. He could not go back to his mother’s house? Fine. He still had his paycheck. He just needed a place to stay. And Zane knew someone who had a place to stay and needed a paycheck. He just had to convince her that this was a good idea.

  Chapter Nine

  Long day did not even begin to cover what Landry felt after her last class had filed out of the building and the final school bell had rung. Some days were long. That was true. They were filled with things like standardized testing, which was pretty much just as boring for the teachers as it was for the students, or teacher work days where she got tons of stuff done but felt as though it took a million years to complete.

  Today was different. It felt different. Today Landry was experiencing the distinctive sensation of hopelessness and failure. She was embarrassed by the school counselor’s words. She was embarrassed at the idea of Mr. Trujillo asking Mrs. Hart to talk to Landry because they were all what? Worried about Landry’s lack of money? Financial problems. Her emotional well being? Did they honestly think that she was incapable of taking care of those things herself?

  Landry put her face in her hands and exhaled a breath of frustration. She could not understand what had gone so very wrong in her life. She should have been happy. She had a job and a home. She had her health. She had survived. Was that not enough for those around her?

  “Uh, Ms. Landry?” There was a little knock on her door.

  Of course the door was open so when Landry looked up there were two people standing there staring at her with no small amount of consternation. The first was a school aide named Daphne. She was a round woman with long blonde hair and a perpetual smile. At the moment her expression was all genuine concern. And the other person was—horror of horrors—Zane King.

  “I didn’t realize you were”—Daphne looked as though she didn’t know exactly what to say—“not ready to receive a visitor. I’m sorry. “This gentleman was attempting to wander the halls looking for you unaccompanied.”

  Zane gave both women a rueful look of chagrin. “I suppose I didn’t realize that this could make me a potential terrorist. Back in my day visitors were always welcome on campus.”

  “Yeah, things have changed a bit since then,” Daphne told him with a laugh. “Now if someone catches you, we would have to go through lockdown procedures; and let me tell you, that’s no fun!”

  “Especially when everyone is ready to go home and just waiting to finish their day. You’d keep us all a few hours late and that would make you the most unpopular person on campus ever again.” In spite of the sad feelings welling up inside Landry, she could not help but smile at Zane. He was just one of those people who had the ability to instantly lift your spirits with his warm humor and smiles. “Then anytime you showed your face you would get instantly mobbed and attacked.”

  “You know,” Daphne said with a devilish gleam of humor in her blue eyes. “There’s really no reason for a lockdown at that point. We would all be aggressively attacking and neutralizing the threat. Right?”

  “Totally,” Landry agreed solemnly. “Good point. And thank you for finding my lost friend.”

  Daphne hid a smile and turned around. At the last second she gave Landry another long look before leaving the room. “You know we’re friends, right?”

  “Yes.” What was this about?

  Daphne pursed her lips. “I just wanted you to remember that. Because I personally think that if you need something, you’ll ask
.”

  “Oh. Right.” Landry felt a shot of irritation and anger but not at Daphne. “Thank you. That means a lot.”

  “No problem.” Daphne gave one more cheerful shrug and then swung her arms and hummed her way out of Landry’s classroom.

  Landry turned back to look at Zane and found him staring at her with a very strange expression on his handsome face. No. It wasn’t strange. It was worse than that. There was some kind of pity involved and she didn’t like it at all.

  “Stop,” Landry told Zane quietly. “I don’t want you looking at me like I’m some kind of stray animal you need to pick up and take home with you. Do not feel sorry for me.”

  “All right.”

  Zane turned his back on her and began to wander around her classroom. He peered at the bulletin boards full of math equations and what she had hoped would be very thought-provoking questions. He leaned in and she saw his lips twitch as he looked them over. Zane had always been a very good student in spite of his complete lack of interest in school in general.

  “I remember some of this stuff,” Zane called over his shoulder. “It’s so weird to think that nothing has really changed.”

  “Actually, I’d say that everything has changed,” Landry said with a dry laugh. “We don’t teach this stuff the way that you and I learned it. It’s probably easier for the kids, but it’s a hell of a lot harder as a teacher.”

  “Really? I would have thought that math was math. You teach it. End of story.”

  “Says the guy who could ace every single test without ever cracking a book or turning in a homework paper,” Landry retorted. Then she sighed. “I suppose for kids who have brains like yours it would still be easy no matter what way we taught it. But finally we have tools to help the kids that don’t pick it up quite so quickly.”