“Call me bro one more time and it'll be the last thing you say,” I said blandly.
“Fine, buddy. But if you can't see this through, I'm going in like I should have from the start. Women can't resist me. Fact.” Gabriel propped his shoes up on the table again. “But that's assuming Wyatt hasn't screwed it up already.”
Cam gave him a dirty look. “Take your shoes off my table.”
“Or what?”
“Or I'll put this,” Cam held one meaty fist up, “right into your pretty face.”
As far as threats went, it was pretty effective. Cam not only looked like an NFL player with that buzz cut, he was also built like one. Gabriel's feet left the table faster than he could undo a bra.
Cam turned back to me. “Did you say something to piss Alecia off? You can come across as a patronizing prick sometimes.”
“You gotta be fucking me,” I muttered into my glass.
“Y'know, he's got a point. You’re an asshole, but it can't hurt to pretend not to be one.”
I swung my gaze to Gabriel, popping my jaw in irritation. “Et tu, Brute?”
He blinked. “Funny, I've always thought you the Brutus to my Caesar.”
I ignored him, like I did ninety percent of the things he said. Gabriel could test even a saint's patience, and unfortunately for him—and me—I was as far from a saint as a guy could get.
I crossed my leg ankle to knee and leveled a stare at them. “If the two of you think you have a better shot at this, you're welcome to try.”
Neither of them volunteered, but then I'd expected that. Gabriel simply didn't give enough shits, and Cam would approach it like a hammer to a porcelain bowl.
Allie wasn't the same girl we'd known either. Some part of me had simply expected an older version of the outcast from back in San Juan.
While she was still hot as hell, the years had given her a hard edge that was downright sexy. Even if she still liked to read, she was now just as likely to throw her book at anyone who pissed her off.
Shit, even the way she said my name was hot, like it was a piece of hard candy in her mouth.
I could think of something else hard that should be in her mouth.
“I know that look,” Gabriel suddenly said, smiling in that annoying way he did so well. “That's the game face you make when you have your eye on pussy.”
“Allie Beckett?” Cam raised his brow. “That's way messed up, man.”
I raised my brow right back. “None of your fucking business, man.”
Gabriel shrugged. “I don't blame you. The sisters were the only hotties we didn't fuck in San Juan. Maybe I'll take a shot at her myself.”
That pissed me off for some reason. “Back. Off.”
The asshole’s smile only widened. “Why? Think she'll like this dick better?”
Inside of grabbing his collar like I itched to, I merely flipped him off.
There was no point in creating a rift between us when we were already standing over a ticking time bomb.
Not to mention the four—now three—of us never fought over women. It just wasn't what we did, and there was no reason why I'd start now.
Not even if that woman in question was a snarky thing half my weight who dared to go toe-to-toe with me like no one ever had.
“Any updates on Estelle Valentine?” I addressed Cam instead, switching the topic to a less dangerous one.
At the mention of the bitch’s name, Cam's face darkened.
“From my intel, she touched down at JFK last Monday. She’s staying at the suites in the Plaza.”
“Doesn't matter where she is.” Gabriel stretched his arms across the back of the leather sofa. “She could be right in front of us doing a lapdance, and we still wouldn't be able to lay a finger on her.”
Truth.
I took another swallow of liquor, welcoming the punishing burn of the alcohol.
What sad shits we were. The combined net worth of the three of us was enough to buy a small country.
Yet here we were, getting our asses handed to us by a lone woman.
Then again, that woman was also the procreator of a devil spawn by the name of Theo Valentine. It shouldn't be surprising that evil ran in their blood.
Fucking bitch.
And fucking Theo too, for that matter.
“Can we kill her?” Gabriel asked hopefully. “We could get Cam's henchmen do a covert assassination, like in John Wick.”
“We're not in a movie, they're not henchmen, and she's not an idiot,” Cam clipped. “She'll release the info to the media the moment we try anything funny, and then we'd be in a fucking cage.”
He scrubbed his hands over his face. “Ten years. Ten bloody years we've had this hang over our heads, and now it's here. Fuck me.”
He could say that again.
I had grown stupidly optimistic over the years that Estelle had either moved on or found her morals.
Obviously neither happened, because two weeks ago, we each received an untraceable email demanding a total of thirty million dollars in exchange for silence on that matter.
Like Cam and Gabriel, I’d seen this coming years ago.
That still didn't make it any easier to swallow, because with that email came the reminder of the first time I had traded my morals for profits.
Everything I had achieved, no matter how impressive, was built on the blood of a man.
Even so, I had come too far since then, worked too damned hard for everything to be taken from me just like that.
I'd given up my life, for fuck's sake.
Approaching Horace's daughter and hoping she had dirt on Estelle was a pretty damned risky move, but by this point, we were willing to try anything short of murder. Maybe even that.
We weren't strangers to it, anyway.
“How are the sisters doing?” Cam asked.
“Not well. They're living in a rented apartment in an area that's shady as hell.”
“That's weird.” He frowned. “Their trust-fund should have been enough to last them several more years at least.”
Up until the point of his death, Horace Beckett had been loaded. The sisters' trust-fund had been rumored to have held twenty million dollars, and that was just a modest estimate.
“He did, and yet they're flat broke.” I picked up the half-smoked cigarette in my ashtray and inhaled. “Squandering twenty mil in ten years. That's so stupid, it's almost impressive.”
“Dude, I spend that amount in a single year.”
“So you're ten times as stupid as they are.”
Gabriel flipped me off.
“Whatever it is,” Cam cut in impatiently, “we should find out more about Valentine. We still don't know if he's working with Estelle. He could be behind this, for all we know.”
Oh yeah, another thing?
Even after a decade, Cam and Gabriel still refused to refer to Theo by his name. It was like our ex-best-friend had turned into Voldemort.
“He's still in LA, last I checked,” I replied. “Give me what you have on him. I'll see if I can find out more.”
Cam raised a brow at me. “That's a lot of shit on your plate.”
I returned his look. “I'll handle it.”
We'd never discussed in detail what had happened all those years ago, but then again, we didn't need to.
I already knew that it had been me who'd started us on this path. It had to be me who fixed it.
We'd screwed up Allie and Karin's lives, true.
But if getting Allie to open her mouth could sort this mess out, by the time I was through with her, she would be singing like a goddamned canary.
The only mistake I'd made so far was misreading her. She had debts, she had shit financial management skills, but she also had more pride than was good for her. Money didn't cut it, and neither did knocking down her self-esteem.
But if there was one thing I'd learned at the helm of a real estate empire, it was that everyone could be had for a price. I just had to figure out what hers was.
And after that
?
My lips curved coldly.
After that, she was mine.
“My Princess and Queen, you are the light of my life. Words cannot express the adoration and love I have for you. You're an angel in every way. Happy 12th anniversary.
P.S. I'll be late at work, don't wait up.”
I'd just read the message when my phone buzzed again with a second text.
“Babykins, wear the red see-through tonight. I have a huge gift waiting for you.”
Ugh.
My eyes rolled back so hard I was surprised they didn't become stuck.
No prizes for guessing what the ‘huge gift' was. In addition to being a cheating bastard, Charles Duncan was also unbelievably stingy, and the only gift awaiting his mistress was his very unimpressively-sized penis.
I wished I didn't know that, but unfortunately for me, placing orders for custom-made condoms was in Charles Duncan's PA's long list of unofficial duties.
Resisting the urge to gag, I forwarded my boss' texts to Stella, my go-to florist, with the request to have them handwritten on gift cards and bundled with accompanying bouquets.
My phone vibrated again a moment later, the text coming from Stella this time.
“WTF? He's cheating on his anniversary night??? PS, roses for both?”
My lips quirked as I fired out my reply.
“He cheats most nights anyway. Tulips for the wife, and maybe red roses for Summer to match her underwear. Please don't get the addresses wrong!”
“My mental corneas are burning. And babe, I'm a professional. ;)”
With that settled, I set aside my phone and leaned back in my chair, squeezing out the cramps in my neck as I did.
The sky outside the office was already dark.
It had been a longer day than usual since it was Charles' anniversary tomorrow, which meant he was presently away in some hotel with his mistress.
That also meant that he’d left me to fend off the angry phone calls from Mrs. Duncan, who didn't make it easy for me to sympathize with her. My ears were still ringing from her screaming.
Then again, if I had a husband like Charles Duncan, I'd be screaming too.
As I rolled my neck and worked out the aches in my muscles, I thought again of that strange meeting with Ryland three nights ago.
Since then, Karin had been hounding me for details about the mystery guy who bought her painting. I just couldn't bring myself to tell her that her first buyer was an entitled jerk from our hometown who didn't give a damn about her or her art.
So in the end, I told a few white lies, and several outright ones. Karin bought them all, and I felt like crap for lying.
No thanks to a certain asshole.
Narrowing my eyes, I straightened in my chair and pulled up a new tab on my computer.
“Ryland Wyatt,” I murmured as I typed his name into the search bar and hit “Enter”.
The search immediately displayed several results of the jerk, and I scanned through the articles, piecing together bits of info.
He was the CEO of Wyatt Corp now, which was expected. Everyone in San Juan had known that Ryland would take over his dad's spot one day.
What surprised me however, was that Ryland seemed to be pretty good at what he did.
I leaned forward, frowning at the article on my computer screen.
Strike that.
He was freakishly good.
Profits were rolling in, share prices were climbing for the third quarter in a row, and journalists from business papers were crowing on and on about how the industry's youngest CEO was taking his grandfather's empire to even greater heights.
I didn't follow Wyatt Corp news for obvious reasons, but I knew that they were rumored to hold sway over even the country's property prices. To take that monstrosity and go even further with it was impressive.
I scowled, both surprised and puzzled.
This didn't sound like the guy from back in San Juan at all.
Ryland was smart, sure. All four of the guys were—you needed a certain level of intelligence to be their kind of manipulative.
But it wasn't like Ryland used those brains for anything more than his social games. If he hadn't been in their private room having a sex fest, he would be out on the terrace or down by the pool with his arm draped around some party girl.
Or he’d be drinking.
Or boredly watching the fights that Theo got his sick entertainment from.
In other words, Ryland was the exact definition of filthy-rich, depraved wastrel. He was as far from a capable CEO as I could imagine.
None of this made sense to me.
Bewildered, I clicked on a thumbnail of him speaking at a convention.
It was a photo of him standing on a stage like the kind they had at those TED talks, looking handsome and assured in his suit as he gave a presentation. I imagined the hundreds of people in the audience watching him with rapt attention.
If I hadn't known Ryland from back then, I might have even felt a tiny flutter in my stomach.
I scrolled through the rest of the photos and soon came to a paparazzi photo of him at a yacht party, and ho-ly crap.
He was shirtless.
And ripped.
I glanced around my empty office guiltily before turning back to the screen.
The photo had captured him on the deck of the yacht, with his dark hair slicked back and rivulets of water trickling down the sculpted planes of his pecs and washboard abs. His body was as toned as it had been back then, and larger now.
My cheeks heated when I recalled how close we had stood that night, with my breasts brushing against that.
After taking a final look, I tore my eyes away from the photo.
It didn't matter that he was hot. On principle alone, Ryland was the last man on Earth I should be drooling over.
I pulled up another browser tab and searched the next name: Gabriel Easton.
Unlike Ryland, Gabriel's search results were all linked to tabloid articles, and his interests were reserved solely for parties and socialites.
The only image I could find of him fully dressed showed an attractive guy with sandy-brown hair, decked in a stylish navy jacket and khaki pants. He was stepping out of a garish, bright red Ferrari, which probably meant that he hadn't changed much. Gabriel had always liked to be the center of attention.
I searched for Cameron Lancaster next.
“Managing Director at Lancaster Hoteliers,” I murmured as I read his profile.
Cam was even more jacked now, though he'd already been built like a bull back then. Other than that he looked pretty much unchanged, with his dark blonde hair still cropped in the same efficient style.
And finally, Theo Valentine.
I chewed my lips as I scanned the search results. Apparently, my would-have-been step-brother had his own law firm now.
I had nothing but sympathy for his employees. If his sadism back in San Juan had been any indication, they were likely suffering a fate worse than death.
Theo himself looked handsomely evil as ever, with his black hair and tanned skin and empty amber eyes. He looked like he was doing well.
They all did.
Exhaling silently, I closed the tabs.
There I had it. The guys were doing great in life, and I couldn't have turned out more differently from them if I tried.
How far you've fallen, Allie cat.
I tipped my head back, staring at the peeling ceiling above my cubicle.
Ryland may be a jerk, but he wasn't wrong on that point.
***
It was ten-thirty when I came up from the subway station and began making my way back to our apartment fifteen minutes away. Karin and I shared a two-bedroom in a borough far from the city center, and while it was no Upper East Side, at least we had a roof over our heads.
I made my way past the deserted blocks briskly, texting Karin to let her know I was on my way. The area was lit only by sporadic streetlamps, leaving pitch-black alleys between them, and
I made sure to stay clear of those.
I was busy reading the news on my phone when suddenly the hairs on my nape prickled with awareness.
Something wasn’t right. Frowning, I perked my ears.
Then I stiffened when I heard it.
There was a set of heavy footsteps walking a short distance behind me.
Swallowing against my uneasiness, I began to quicken my pace.
To my horror, so did the footsteps.
Oh shit.
My blood turned to ice, and news reports of women who disappeared from the streets never to be seen again flashed in my mind.
I strode along as quickly as I could without breaking into a full-on run. I had an instinct that it would only trigger the guy into action, and there was no doubt in my mind that he would catch me in an heartbeat.
But the footsteps behind me quickened as well, picking up pace when I did.
Shit, shit, shit.
Turning a sharp corner, I cast a panicked glance around for anyone who could help, but the street was completely deserted.
I had to get out of here.
I drew a breath and angled my feet, gearing to run for my life.
But before I could take off, a large hand suddenly clamped over my mouth and nose, yanking me back against a hard chest.
“No!” I tried to scream, but my voice was choked in my throat.
White hot terror filled me as I thrashed, clawing and kicking like a mindless animal. But the band of steel around my chest only tightened, dragging me deeper into the darkness of the alley behind us.
The hand around my mouth loosened for a split second, and I barely had enough time to draw a panicked breath before I was jerked back again.
“Quiet,” the man growled in my ear.
I struggled harder for a split second—then froze at the familiar voice.
Ryland?
My eyes widened, but I couldn't make a sound with his hand pressed so tightly over my mouth.
From the corner of my eye, I saw his jaw hovering close to my face as he threw a glance back at the sidewalk. Then he gave me another warning look before he released me and gripped my arm.
“Come.”
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