The Ultimate Treasure

by Anne, Melody

  This wasn’t unusual.

  They continued speeding along, trying to outrun the demons chasing them as they flew down the highway, hitting over a hundred miles an hour and continuing on, faster and faster.

  It wasn’t quick enough. They kept on going until they hit the edge of town in Bay Harbor, Washington, where they found a dilapidated bar with a blinking neon sign that had some of the letters burned out.

  Cooper, who was driving, jerked the steering wheel and came to an abrupt halt outside the run-down building. “Good enough,” he said. His fists clenched with the urge to hit something, or better yet, someone.

  “Yep,” his brother replied from the backseat.

  Getting out of the car, they made their way to the entrance, an undeniable swagger in their gait—a swagger that made people turn and watch them wherever they went. Though young, the Armstrong brothers already had a reputation in their small community for stirring up trouble.

  When they entered a room, patrons would turn away, glancing back at them with a wary eye. The brothers were the first in for a fight and the last ones standing.

  They were wealthy, and not above flashing their fat wallets, Rolex watches, and extravagant cars. They were also arrogant and hot-tempered, a foursome to both be leery of and look at with awe. Cooper was the oldest at twenty-four, each of his brothers one year, almost to the date, behind him: Nick at twenty-three, Maverick at twenty-two, and Ace, the baby, at twenty-one.

  On this night, though, they were looking for more than just the usual trouble. They were out for blood, but the demon chasing them was relentless, and no matter how fast they moved, this was something they couldn’t outrun.

  Their father was dying.

  Maybe it was the feeling of helplessness or maybe, for once, it was not being the strongest ones in a room. Whatever it was, Cooper, Nick, Maverick, and Ace were scared, and because they wouldn’t admit that, they were trouble to anyone in their path.

  This band of brothers had always been revered as much as they’d been feared. They were tall, lean, and had distinct green eyes that hid their innermost thoughts but shone with a sparkle that most couldn’t resist.

  Walking indoors, Cooper sighed in anticipation. Smoke filled the air as loud music echoed off the walls. A few heads turned in their direction, and Cooper scoped them out, looking for a potential boxing partner.

  The nervous energy rising off him in waves needed an outlet, so the first person that gave him the slightest reason would feel the wrath of his heartbreak, denial, and feeling of helplessness.

  As if the patrons knew this group was up to no good, they cast their eyes downward, particularly annoying Cooper in their weakness to accept the challenge radiating off his entire body.

  The boys ordered beers, then leaned against the bar, facing out as they scanned the crowd. None of them spoke for several moments, each lost in thought.

  Cooper was thinking they might just have to give up on this place and find a new location when his gaze captured the angry look of a man shooting pool. Cooper smirked at the guy and practically saw steam rise from the man’s ears. The stranger began making his way toward them. Cooper’s fists clenched with the need to punch.

  “You’re the Armstrong boys, right?”

  The man was swaying as he stepped closer to them, his glazed-over eyes narrowed. Cooper stood at full attention. This just might be the huckleberry he’d been in search of.

  “Yep,” Coop said, not altering his stance at all.

  “I hear your daddy’s on his deathbed.” The man said the cold words with glee.

  Maybe the man was too drunk to know exactly what he was doing, but instantly the four brothers stepped a bit closer to one another, their knuckles cracking, their collective breath hissing out.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t listen to gossip,” Maverick said in a low growl.

  “Oh, I don’t think it’s gossip. You see, your daddy has run over many real workingmen to get to the top of that mountain he’s built for himself. And now he’s getting the early death he deserves.”

  Nick instantly stepped away from the bar, but Cooper shot his hand out and stopped him. “He was looking at me, Nick,” he said, his tone deathly low.

  His brothers shot him a look, but then they stepped back, letting Cooper deal with his demons, and the drunken bastard before them, at the same time.

  “Dave, come on. You’ve had too much to drink,” a woman said, placing her hand on his arm.

  “Get the hell off of me. I know what I’m doing,” Dave snarled at the woman, pushing her away.

  Cooper’s fingers twitched in anticipation. He wanted to deck this asshole even more now. It was okay to fight with a man, but to push a lady around was never acceptable.

  “Maybe you should lay off the lady,” Maverick said. He wanted to push forward and take Cooper’s place. Cooper looked at him and Maverick stepped back, though it was costing him to do so.

  “Maybe you should keep your damn mouth shut,” Dave said to Mav.

  “This is Cooper’s fight,” Nick reminded Maverick when he began to shake with the need to hit this piece of scum.

  Dave turned away from Maverick, his beady eyes focused again on Cooper. “Are you just like your daddy, boy? Do you like living off the men busting their asses for your family in those crap factories?”

  “At least our daddy provides trash like you a job,” Cooper said.

  “Not that you would know. You haven’t worked a damn day in your life,” Dave snapped.

  “Nope. And I have a hell of a lot more than you, don’t I?” Cooper taunted him, making sure the man could see the gold Rolex he was sporting.

  The man spit as he tried to get words out. He was furious. When Cooper pulled out his wallet and slapped a hundred-dollar bill on the bar and told the waitress to take care of the man’s tab since he probably couldn’t, Dave’s face turned beet-red with fury and embarrassment.

  “I don’t need the likes of you taking care of anything for me,” he finally managed to sputter.

  Finishing his beer in a long swallow, Cooper took his time before putting the glass down on the counter. The bar was strangely quiet as the patrons watched this scene unfold before them.

  “So you’re one of those guys who blames his lot in life on the big man in the top office instead of doing a day’s hard work, huh?” Cooper said, a taunting smile on his lips.

  “I like my damn life. I don’t need some rich kid who doesn’t know what work is telling me he’s better than me,” the man blustered.

  “I am better than you,” Coop told him with a wink he was sure would enrage the man. Just to add fuel to the fire, he pulled out a wad of cash and threw it at the man’s feet. “Here’s some spending money for you. Obviously you need the cash more than I do since I have a mountain of it back home.”

  “I’m going to enjoy kicking your ass, boy,” Dave said, tossing his beer bottle behind him in his rage. Though he did look down at the cash longingly. Cooper would have laughed, if he had been capable of it at that moment.

  His brothers didn’t even flinch at the hundreds lying on the filthy floor, money that would be swallowed up the second the boys stepped away.

  “I’d like to see you try,” Cooper said with just enough of a mocking glow to his eyes to really infuriate the man. “Follow me.”

  His muscles were coiled and he was more than ready. He headed toward the door. He could do it in the bar or flatten this guy outside. Either way was good with him.

  “You gonna leave the convoy behind, or do you need your brothers to save your ass?” the man taunted.

  The fact that this piece of garbage was questioning his honor infuriated Cooper even more. He took a second before answering, not even turning around to face the drunkard.

  “You obviously don’t know me at all if you think I need any help kicking your flabby ass,” Coop
er told him. “Chicken ass,” he then mumbled, knowing it would push this piece of trash over the limit.

  The air stirred against his ears, alerting Cooper of the attack coming toward him. They’d barely made it out the front doors before the man swung, thinking that because Cooper was ahead of him he would get a cheap shot from behind.

  He wasn’t counting on Cooper’s rage, or his soberness.

  Spinning around, Coop threw all his weight behind a punishing blow that made brutal contact with the drunk’s face. The resounding crack of Coop’s knuckles breaking the man’s nose echoed across the parking lot.

  The man spit blood as he tried to get up before falling back to the ground. Cooper didn’t give him a chance. In half a heartbeat, he was on the ground, slugging the man again and again.

  “Should we stop this?” Maverick asked, leaning against the outside wall of the bar as patrons poured out to watch the fistfight.

  “Not a chance. Hell, I’m hoping someone else mouths off so I can get a punch or two thrown in,” Nick mumbled, looking around.

  “It’s my turn next,” Ace grumbled.

  Maverick held his brother back. “You’ll get your turn,” Maverick promised him.

  No one was paying the least attention to the other brothers as the fight in front of them continued on the ground and Dave got in a good punch to Cooper’s face.

  Within a couple minutes, though, the fight was over. Dave was knocked out on the ground, and with the show over, the patrons of the bar lost interest and went back inside to their cold beer and stale peanuts. The brothers watched as Cooper slowly stood while spitting out a stream of saliva and touching his swollen lip.

  A couple of men picked up Dave and quietly hauled him away. The brothers didn’t even bother watching them go.

  “Should we go back in?” Maverick asked.

  “Yeah. I’m done with this trash. Maybe there’s another idiot inside looking for a reason to get a nose job,” Cooper said.

  Before Nick or Ace could respond, Nick’s phone rang. He looked at the caller ID and sighed. It rang twice more before he answered.

  He was silent for a moment as the caller spoke. Then he nodded, though the person couldn’t see him. “Yes, Mom. We’ll be there.”

  He hung up. “We have to go back home,” Nick told them. Even without the call, Nick was always the voice of reason.

  “I’m not ready to go back there,” Ace said, his eyes downcast.

  “I can’t,” Cooper admitted. He couldn’t allow the adrenaline high to stop, because then . . . then, he might actually feel real pain instead of anger.

  “It’s time,” Nick said again.

  They didn’t want to listen, but they knew their brother was right.

  It was like a parade down the green mile as they moved back to the car and piled in. They drove much more slowly toward home than they’d driven away from it, taking their time, none of them speaking.

  When they pulled up in front of the large mansion they’d grown up in, they remained in the Jag, none of them wanting to be the first to open their car door. Finally, though, Nick got out, and the others followed. Their passage into the mansion was quiet, their shoulders hunched.

  “Where have you been?”

  They stopped in the foyer as their uncle Sherman busted down the stairs glaring at them. The urgency in his voice had them terrified. They knew time was running out.

  “We had to blow off some steam,” Maverick said, his hands tucked into his pockets as he rocked back and forth on his heels.

  “Your father’s been asking for you,” Sherman scolded. “And there isn’t much time left. Your mother will need all of you.”

  “We’re sorry,” Cooper said. The others seemed incapable of speech and just nodded their apologies.

  Sherman sighed, not one to stay angry for long.

  They followed their uncle up the stairs. None of them wanted to walk through that bedroom door. But they did it. Their father, who had once been so strong, was frail and weak now, the cancer taking everything from him, leaving him a shadow of the man he’d always been.

  “Come here,” he said, his voice barely a whisper.

  Slowly, the four boys surrounded the bed, facing the man they would soon lose.

  “Time is running out so I can’t mince words,” their father started.

  “Dad . . .” Cooper tried to interrupt, but his mother put her hand on his arm.

  “Let him speak, son.”

  Her voice was so sad that the boys turned to look at her for a moment, their shoulders stiffening before they turned back to their father and waited.

  “I’ve done wrong by all of you,” he told them, disappointment on his face. He looked extra long at the blood on Cooper’s eye and sadly shook his head. “All of you.”

  “No you haven’t, Dad,” Maverick insisted.

  “Yes, I have. You’re men now, but you have no plans for the future. I wanted to give you the world, but you’ve only learned how to take because you haven’t learned how to earn anything. I know you’ll grow into fine men. I have no doubt about it. But please don’t hate me when I’m gone,” he said before he began coughing.

  “We would never hate you, Dad,” Nick quickly said.

  “You might for a while,” their father told them. “But someday you will thank me. I’m doing what I’ve done because I love you.”

  “What are you saying?” Ace asked.

  “You’ll know soon, son,” their father said.

  “Dad . . .” Maverick began, but their father shut his eyes.

  Cooper willed himself to say something, anything to break this awful silence. But he just stood there, anger, sadness, fear flowing through him.

  And then it was too late.

  Not a sound could be heard in the room when their father stopped breathing. For the last time in each of their lives, the boys shed a tear as they looked down at their deceased father.

  Then Cooper turned and walked out. He didn’t stop at the front door. He didn’t stop at the end of the driveway. He kept moving, faster and faster until he was in a full-blown sprint with his gut and sides burning. He tried to outrun the fact that he was a disappointment, that he’d failed his father. What if the man was right? What if he never became half the man his father was? He ran faster.

  Still, he wasn’t able to outrun his father’s last words of disappointment . . .

  “. . . And for my boys, I leave each of you, Cooper, Nick, Maverick, and Ace, a quarter of my assets, but there is a stipulation . . .”

  It had only been a day since the funeral, and none of the boys wanted to be sitting in this uptight lawyer’s office while he read a stupid will. It wasn’t as if they didn’t know what it was going to say anyway.

  Their father, of course, had left his fortune to them; that is, what he hadn’t already given them in their enormous trust funds, and to their mother and his brother, Uncle Sherman. They were the only living relatives—well, the only ones they knew about, at least. So this was a waste of all their time.

  “Can you get on with this? I have things to do,” Cooper snapped.

  “You will learn some respect by the end of this,” Sherman warned Coop.

  “Yeah, I get it,” Coop said. “Can I go now? I don’t want to hear the rest.”

  “I think you do,” their mother said.

  Her sweet voice instantly calmed the boys. They did love their mother, had a great deal of respect for her, and listened when she spoke. But they had hardened through the years, taking for granted what had been given to them.

  That was about to change.

  “You won’t receive a dime of your inheritance until you’ve proven that you will actually better not only your lives, but the lives of others.”

  Cooper spoke first. “What in the hell is that supposed to mean?” He was up on his feet, his cha
ir flying backward with the momentum. His brothers were right behind him.

  The world was suddenly spinning and none of them knew how to deal with this latest news.

  “If you will shut up and listen, then you will hear the rest,” Sherman told them.

  The four young men were obviously upset, but slowly they resumed their seats, all of them except for Cooper, who stood there with his arms crossed, daggers coming from his eyes.

  “You have ten years to turn your lives around. At the end of that ten years, if you haven’t proven yourselves self-sufficient, by working hard, being respectful to your mother and your uncle, and bringing something to the society that you live in, then your inheritance will be donated to charity.”

  The attorney paused as if he were reluctant to read whatever else was coming next.

  “Get on with it,” Ace growled.

  “Your mother and I shared a wonderful, beautiful, exciting life together. A man isn’t meant to be alone. He’s meant to love, to share, to grow with a woman who will help guide him through the hardest parts of his life,” the attorney began.

  “What in the world are you speaking about?” Maverick snapped.

  “Son, this is in your father’s own words, so I would pay attention,” Uncle Sherman said, his tone sad.

  Maverick leaned forward, but he didn’t seem to be hearing anything that was being spoken at that moment.

  “Shall I continue?” the attorney asked.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Cooper said with a wave of his hand.

  “You will receive your full inheritance once you marry.”

  Dead silence greeted those words as the boys looked at one another, and then at their mother, who had a serene smile on her face.

  Finally, Cooper was the one to speak again. “Mom? What in the hell is going on?”

  She gave her son a sad smile. “Your father and I have watched the four of you lose your way these past several years. He knew he was dying and he’d run out of time to guide you, shape you. He didn’t want to lose you forever, as I don’t. So he changed the will.”

  The boys waited for her to go on, but she sat there silently.