by Lexi Blake
Drew’s eyes pinned him. “You can’t have a conscience, Riley. Not when it comes to war. Do you think for a second Castalano sat around worried about the four of us? Do you think he worried about what would happen to us? No. He intended to kill us, too. He didn’t worry about collateral damage.”
“I would like to think we’re better than Steven Castalano.”
“We don’t have the luxury. Go home to Austin, Riley. I’ll deal with Stratton myself.”
Anger flared through Riley. “Will you stop being such an ass? I have no idea what the fuck has gotten into you tonight, but I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be at StratCast tomorrow working on the plan we agreed on years ago. I’m not putting her before you, Drew. I’m not putting her before our parents. If I have to, I’ll take her down, too, but if there’s any way she doesn’t get ripped up, I’ll try. Are you finished bitch-slapping me? Because one of us has to go to work in the morning.”
“Don’t fight. I really hate it when you fight,” a soft voice said.
Drew’s eyes closed briefly and then he turned. “Bran, I thought you were going out with Hatch.”
Bran stood in the doorway, his big frame in shadows. “I came home early.”
“He got in a fight.” Hatch walked in behind him, scrubbing a hand over his head and sighing. “It’s fine. I dealt with the cops.”
Drew strode past him, turning on the light and then shaking his head.
Riley felt his fists clench as he got a good look at his youngest brother. “I hope the other guy doesn’t look worse. Should you be in a hospital?”
Bran’s lip was busted, his left eye swelling. “I’m fine. I’ve had worse.”
That was the problem. Bran had had far worse. Riley thought some of his dreams were shitty, but he had no idea how Bran ever slept.
“What happened?” Drew asked, looking to Hatch.
“What do you think?” Hatch shot the question back. There was no way to miss the splatter of blood on his white dress shirt. Likely it was Bran’s. “Some guy got handsy with the stripper Bran had been talking to and Bran threw himself in.” He slid a narrowed glance Bran’s way. “You know they have bouncers at those places.”
To say Bran had anger issues was to put it mildly. He got particularly angry when women were abused.
But then he’d watched a foster sister die. He’d been sixteen, months away from being brought out of the system and under Hatch’s legal guardianship, though it was always Drew who had taken care of them. Hatch was simply older and had cleaned up nicely after a stint in rehab that had never completely taken.
Bran never talked about her. Never mentioned her name, but somehow Riley knew she was always in the back of his brother’s mind. Drew had forced him to see a shrink for a while, but Bran had begged his way out of it. It was hard to say no to their younger brother.
It was also hard to watch him battling demons no one could see.
“The other guy outweighed him by a hundred pounds and had three friends with him. We’re lucky the fucker didn’t have a knife,” Hatch pointed out. “One of these days, he’s not going to be so lucky.”
“You can’t do things like that.” Drew bit off every word as though they hurt him. He put a hand behind his brother’s neck. “You have to stop fighting.”
Bran’s face went mulishly stubborn. “She didn’t want him to touch her like that. She’s got a right to say no, and don’t tell me she’s a stripper. She’s a woman and she can say no whether she’s dressed in a nun’s habit or completely naked.”
“I know, Bran. I agree with you, but you can’t risk yourself like that. You have to stop and think. You have to place some damn value on your own life. We’ll talk about it more tomorrow. For now, go clean up.” Drew let Bran go as he looked back at Hatch. “Should I expect another lawsuit?”
Bran’s fighting had cost Drew more than Riley liked to think about. Often it didn’t matter that Bran was trying to save some woman from a belligerent asshole. The asshole got a lawyer and came after him. That was where Riley had to step in. “I’ll handle it.”
Hatch shook his head. “No. They ran the minute the cops were called, and Bambi vouched for Bran. No charges filed. No one figured out who he was. I’m sure her parents wished they’d rethought that name, though. You know Gladys never ends up on the pole. If I’d had a daughter, she would have been named Gladys.”
“She’s working her way through med school,” Bran said as he walked away.
Hatch’s eyes closed. “That boy is going to kill me. I swear. One of these days, I won’t be around. It’s like he has a damn death wish.”
So it had been a crappy night all around.
It had only been shitty when he walked in here. While he’d been with Ellie . . . He couldn’t think that way. It was hard because they knew they were almost at the end. They needed to hold on, to not get distracted.
He couldn’t let Ellie Stratton distract him. His brothers needed him. His parents needed him.
“I’ll try again to get him back into therapy,” Drew said, returning to his computer. He slid back into his chair and once again powered it up. This was how Drew retreated, his own private world.
Riley didn’t have one. He had work, and right now his work would get him thinking about Ellie Stratton again. “I’ll handle StratCast, Drew. Don’t worry about anything on that end. You can count on me.”
Drew’s eyes lifted briefly, and Riley was reminded that this was the boy who’d had to work and save and sacrifice. He’d gone hungry some nights so Riley had food. He’d done everything so he could bring his siblings home.
He couldn’t fail Drew.
“I know you will,” Drew said softly. “And I’ll work from this end.”
“And I’ll take the rest of that Scotch and try to get some sleep,” Hatch quipped.
Drew reached out for the crystal decanter. “There’s whiskey in the kitchen. You can’t appreciate this.”
Hatch frowned. “You are not my son. Lucky for you, I don’t like prissy Scotch.”
Sometimes Riley wondered what it had been like for Drew and Hatch during that time before they’d gotten Riley and then Bran out of foster care. It had been just the two of them for a while, and it seemed to have bonded them in a way Riley didn’t always understand.
Drew smiled a little. “You don’t like prissy anything, Hatch. Sleep well.”
Hatch shook his head. “If I sleep at all after today. I thought we would be done. Stratton’s dead. We’ve almost got Castalano. Cain’s the end. She’s supposed to be the end. Once we bring down her Martha Stewart doily–fucking empire . . . damn it, we were supposed to be able to rest.”
There had been a fourth. He’d been able to forget that detail Case had sprung on them while he’d been with Ellie. Now it all came flooding back. All these years and they hadn’t known a fourth person had been in on the plot to kill their mother and father.
“I’m studying the corporate structure again,” Drew replied. “I’ll figure out who else would have gained the most money. It’s all about money.”
Hatch stared down at Drew. “Me. It would have been me, Drew. If you had half the brain I trained you to have, you would throw me out tonight.”
“Get some sleep, Hatch. We’ll go over everything in the morning.” Drew’s eyes never left the screen. “And for the record, I never once suspected you. I figured out your secret a long time ago. Even if you had known what Dad was planning, you wouldn’t have outed him. You wouldn’t have done anything like this.”
Hatch didn’t back down. “And why is that? Money is a great motivator. I would have lost a fucking bundle had your father blocked the sale of our company.”
“Money never meant more to you than she did.”
Hatch stilled. “No. No, it didn’t.”
He turned and walked toward the back of the house.
Riley stared after him. “He didn’t know we knew he was in love with Mom?”
“He thinks he’s smarter than he is,” Drew said with a half smile. “I knew he was in love with our mom before she died. I also know he didn’t act on it. He cared as much about Dad as he did about her. It’s why he went into that deep decline.”
Deep decline was a polite way of saying Hatch found a bottle and hadn’t come out of it for years.
Maybe Drew wasn’t as cynical as he acted. Riley had wondered earlier if Drew would suspect Hatch.
It had all begun when five friends started a business. Benedict had the vision. Patricia and Hatch had the cash at the time. Steven Castalano and Phillip Stratton had the connections. They’d made a lot of money before the IPO. After the IPO, their father had found out someone had manipulated the stock. He couldn’t stand the collusion and had made an appointment to talk to the Federal Trade Commission.
He’d died two days before he could make that meeting.
The company had made millions, none of which the Lawless family saw a dime of.
Hatch had gotten the money, but he’d been so drunk by that time, he’d pissed it away. He hadn’t cared when Stratton had come to him with the plan to sell the company for a massive profit.
From what Riley could tell, Hatch had done his deep dive the day after Benedict and Iris Lawless had burned to death. He hadn’t come out of it until Drew had found him, forced him to get somewhat clean, and started 4L.
It had given Hatch purpose.
Of course, guilt could have sent him on the same path. If Hatch had made the choice of money over loyalty, it would make sense he’d found solace in the bottom of a bottle.
Riley didn’t know Hatch the way Drew did. He moved in, keeping his words low. “The board was small. How can you really dismiss him?”
“I can and I have. I know the man and he couldn’t have done this. The answer lies somewhere else. I would really like to get the contents of Stratton’s computer. I can’t imagine Ellie tossed everything.”
“Why don’t you use your backdoor?”
“Stratton was paranoid. He kept his personal files off the network. I would bet he taught his daughter to as well. You need to find that system and download as much as you can onto a thumb drive. Maybe that will show us something. I want to know who he talked to back in those days.”
“You honestly believe he kept those correspondences?” It wasn’t something Riley would do.
“I keep everything. I’m going to go through every employee at Dad’s old company and comb through their financials. God, what a fucking mess. How did I miss this?”
“You couldn’t have known. It doesn’t make any sense. There were five major stockholders in that company. Castalano, Stratton, Cain, Hatch, and Dad. Maybe we need to look outside,” Riley offered. “We need to see who bought the stock during the IPO.”
“I can try that.” Drew’s head dropped back, his hand massaging his neck. “I thought it would be over soon, too.”
It looked like their collective nightmare still had them in its grip.
He sat down across from his brother. It would be a long night.
Five
That man looks at you like you’re a big old buffet and he’s been on a diet for years,” Lily said as she walked into Ellie’s office one week later. “We need to close the shades or he won’t get anything done.”
Ellie looked up and sent her assistant a stern glare since she wasn’t alone. Kyle Castalano walked in beside her.
Still, she caught a glimpse of Riley. His eyes locked with hers for a moment before she forced them away.
Steven’s son was a handsome man who always dressed impeccably. If he paid as much attention to his work as he did his clothes, Ellie would have competition for the CEO slot. As it was, Kyle seemed happy to be a vice president and likely spent his afternoons chasing his admin around the desk.
Still, he was Steven’s son, so she put up with him. She had to wonder if he was sniffing around Lily. He’d been hanging around her desk a lot lately.
“Who are you talking about?” Kyle had a large stack of papers in his hands as he glanced back through the window that let her see out into the main office and right through to Riley’s. “Not the lawyer? You really think he’s stupid enough to think sex will work on Ellie? I don’t think Ellie’s had sex in years.”
Yeah, he was obnoxious. “What do you need, Kyle?”
It had been a rough couple of days. She’d fielded calls from her sister. Shari either cried that she was being treated unfairly or screamed that Ellie was a tightwad who wanted her to fail.
Steven hadn’t been in the office. He’d checked out weeks before, as though his retirement had already started. Unfortunately, he was still the CEO of the company and she had to have his approval before moving on certain issues.
She still hadn’t heard whether Riley had sent back the buyout contract. The lawyer stuff moved far too slow for her.
Not to mention the fact that she got horribly distracted because Riley had moved into the office across from hers. It had been the office she had used before taking over her father’s. When her door was open, she could see him moving around. He was on the phone a lot and the man liked to pace, his lean body moving with the grace of a natural predator. Late in the afternoon, he would slip his tie off and roll up his shirtsleeves and she would catch a glimpse of his sun-kissed skin and the muscles underneath.
“We’ve got a problem in accounting.” Kyle placed a thick file on her desk.
“What’s the issue?” There had to be a thousand pages sitting there. Did he expect her to go through all of them?
His pretty-boy face screwed up into an expression of ambivalence. “I don’t know. They said something about money being earmarked for something and used for something else.”
So she would have to handle that, too. Nice. She put a hand on the stack. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Of course you will,” Kyle shot back. He winked Lily’s way. “I’ll see you later, hot stuff.”
Lily rolled her eyes. “Not if I see you first and hide.”
“Oh, and Ellie, tell your attack dog to stay out of my business.” Kyle gestured toward Riley’s office.
So Riley was already hard at work. She’d heard he was asking for reports from department heads. “If he’s in your business, he’s got a good reason. He’s trying to make sure everything is in order for the buyout and the board meeting. Please try to get along with him.”
Kyle leaned against the doorjamb. “I’ll do whatever he needs to ensure the buyout goes through. He doesn’t have to work around me. I want to help you and Daddy Dearest out.”
“I would appreciate it if you didn’t give Riley too much trouble.”
Kyle put a conciliatory hand up. “I wouldn’t dream of it. I’ll send him a copy of that accounting report, too. I’m sorry I’m being a dick. The head of finance talks over my head. I don’t understand half of what he’s saying, and I took college-level accounting.” He glanced back before continuing. “Hey, as long as I’m here, is there something going on with you and the new guy that I should know about?”
“No, why?”
He shrugged. “People are talking.”
“What people?” Ellie asked.
“Hey, you brought in a male-model lawyer. People are going to talk. You’ve spent more time with him than you have any other male employee.”
She felt herself flush but tried to keep her expression perfectly bland. “He’s very important right now. He’s here to ensure that the buyout and board vote go smoothly, so I’ll be spending even more time with him. The gossips need to find something better to do.”
“I wouldn’t expect that to happen anytime soon.” Kyle’s eyes softened. “You know I think of you as a sister. I don’t want you to get hurt. A guy like that is never going to hang around
. If he’s sniffing around you, he’s likely got ulterior motives.”
Yes, Kyle could be a mean sibling. Ever since they’d met as teenagers, he’d always had a nasty edge. “I’ll be sure to keep my relationship with him professional. You don’t need to worry about me. Like you said before, I can’t be controlled with sex. Everyone knows that.”
“Hey, you’re the boss. There’s a reason you’re the boss. You’re practically perfect, Ellie. Everyone knows that. Lord knows my father’s always told me if I want to get anywhere in life, I should be more like you.”
Kyle and his father had a tentative relationship. Steven hadn’t even known Kyle existed before Kyle was fifteen and his mother showed up demanding support. A paternity test and several court dates later, Steven had found himself paying for private high school and college. He’d given Kyle a job at StratCast and they’d found a decent working relationship.
She was going to have to deal with him after Steven was gone.
There was an explosion waiting and the anticipation was killing her.
Stress was starting to eat her alive. They’d been thrown a curveball with the coolant project. Not anything that her guys wouldn’t be able to handle, but it was coming at a bad time. Now this accounting issue, and apparently there was a bunch of gossip.
Little things were falling apart, things that individually wouldn’t be an issue but together could cause serious problems. She needed StratCast to look solid.
The vote was coming up. She needed to get the buyout finished before then.
“I certainly don’t think we need another me,” she finally said, unsure of how exactly to deal with him. “I’m sorry your father said that. I’m sure his intention wasn’t to pit us against one another.”
“You’re right. He simply admires you. I think he thinks of you like a daughter. And I’m sorry to shove the accounting thing your way,” Kyle said with a grimace. “I’m awful with numbers and Sharon’s on maternity leave for another three weeks. I do have good news, though.”