It’s my birthday in a few weeks. I listened to Dave’s fucking message. The asshole was talking about meeting up with me to catch up for old time’s sake.
Fuck that! He wants something.
“Well?” Spider presses. “Did you read it?”
“No.”
“Just as I thought.”
He shakes his head as if in disappointment.
“It’s just a fucking letter. I’ll read it when I get the time.”
Spider looks straight at me with a look between disappointment and fucking curiosity.
“If it was just a letter, then why are you here, Noah?” he demands, his voice low. “You obviously went to great lengths just to find me.”
Yeah. I had to call up King to find this fucker.
“I want to know what happened the days before my brother killed himself.”
“And that’s your problem right there,” he seethes, looking so angry in that moment, I almost reel back but I catch myself.
“What?”
“Let me ask you this first,” he says, leaning in over the table. “You were the first person to find Craig in his den.” I force myself to nod, trying to stay in the present. “What did you see in that room?”
“Are you fucking shitting me?” I snap. “You’re going to ask me to recall what I saw like this is a fucking interrogation?”
“I’ll waterboard you right fucking now if that’ll help you remember!” he fires right back. “You saw the blood on the floor. You saw the lifeless body of your brother lying there, but, Noah, did you see the gun anywhere?”
I freeze.
My body, all tight and coiled with tension, grows incredibly still as I stare at my brother’s best friend and the man whose swagger and confidence I’ve always admired.
In a way, Spider was our big brother, our confidante, the guy you’d trust with your dirty laundry and could always count on to have your back. But now, he has my fucking balls over an open flame, forcing me to fucking remember the worst day of my life.
“The gun?” I echo.
“Yes. Did you see it in the room?” I try to search my mind, but I come up blank. “What else did you see in that day? Specifically in that room?”
“There was so much chaos, Spider, I don’t see how that fucking matters.”
“I’ll tell you what was there,” Spider grits out. “There was broken glass, ripped books and papers all over the floor. The furniture upended, Craig’s sketches were torn up to shreds. Now you tell me, does that sound like Craig to you?”
And there it is! The thing that has been nagging at the back of my head for years ever since I stepped into Craig’s messy room.
“You and I both know Craig could never stand wearing a shirt with a single wrinkle in it, and his den… that place was always immaculately clean, organized to help with…”
“His creative process,” I finish with a mutter.
“Exactly!”
That’s so fucking true. Spider spent as much time in our home as Astraea did—before she left.
“But see, that room was a fucking mess because the night before Craig and David—”
“They fought, yes, I know,” Spider bites out, looking hellish in that moment. “That fucker David broke Craig’s nose.”
“And I stopped the fight.”
“Yes, you’ve always been there for Craig and your mother. Always the temperate knight but now I need you to fucking man up and face the truth head on,” Spider grits out. “Before you broke up that fucking fight and tried to punch your father, did you hear what they were fighting about?”
Again, I grow still in my seat.
It’s like I’m taking a re-write exam.
I know the questions and I know that I have the fucking answers, but somehow, the answers don’t fit. They don’t make any sense.
I remember hearing the shrill sound of my mother’s terrified, body-chilling scream.
I remember distinctly hearing the sound of flesh pounding flesh.
But I definitely heard what David called my brother.
“David called him a faggot that didn’t deserve to have his name,” I bite out, each word excruciating and heavy on my tongue.
Spider looks away now, his face stone cold and troubled.
“Craig struggled with his sexuality for a while, but I knew from the time we were kids. One day we ditched school and decided to go play five seconds in Heaven with some girls in the empty gym,” he starts, his voice full of melancholy. “Craig was nervous—shit, we both were. First time kissing a girl and shit, but for him it was different. He didn’t want to kiss that girl. His level of discomfort was so severe that I just knew.”
I’ve never heard this story before. I stare at Spider in shock.
“What did you do?”
“What do you think I did?” he scoffs, a ghost of a smile on his face. “Started dissing everyone in that gym to make the entire game seem pathetic and redundant.”
Ah yes. When the cool kids declare something is stupid and lame, everyone falls in line.
It’s all nice and warm, thinking of the past until I see Spider reach for something under the folded newspaper beside his laptop. A gun. But before he gets up, he looks me dead in the eye.
“Craig was the firstborn of an entire generation, but unlike you and the boys, George, Alex and Emmett, Craig was alone. Now, imagine the weight of responsibility he had on his shoulders and the shit he was going through emotionally.”
“I get that! Life sucks if you’re one of the Blues, but I still don’t…”
“Noah, your father left,” Spider grits out. “With all the shit he was doing with no one the wiser, did he ever appear to you like he’s the type to just up and leave?”
No…
David was a crude, cruel sonofabitch. He hurt my mother, verbally and sometimes physically, but even then, he never left.
He cheated on her, had various affairs all over the world, but he stayed. We knew it, but no one else did.
“No.”
“So why would he suddenly decide to leave?”
“I think—”
“No, that’s for you to mull over when you finally read that letter,” he says in a rush. “On your birthday, the private attorneys the four families use will be coming to see you.”
“Wait, what?” I demand. “How do you even… you know what, never mind.”
“They’ll come and present you with a choice.”
“A choice?”
“Of whether or not you want to be the top dog of your family, Noah. Keep up!”
“But I’m the only heir.”
“No, you’re not,” Spider says seriously. “David is still alive, isn’t he?”
Fuck!
“What does all this even mean?”
My mind is racing so fast, I can hardly think straight.
“It means just that,” he says in a low voice. “You see, the problem here is you still think Craig’s death as just a suicide. Now, you’ve shown me that you want answers, but some things you have to see for yourself.”
It’s like a bomb just went off in the middle of the restaurant.
As I’m about to rip him a new one, he stands up so suddenly as the door behind him bursts open with an actual SWAT team.
Looks like the fucker was actually telling the truth. This is a sting.
But I’m not impressed. In fact, I’m not feeling anything at all as chaos reigns down around me.
All I can hear are the last words Spider just said.
“The problem here is you still think of Craig’s death as just another suicide.”
Chapter 15
KIM
Past
Blue Fairy: Another year on this planet. How does it feel?
ME: What?
Blue Fairy: Your birthday.
ME: How did you know?
Blue Fairy: I used to pay attention to you…
ME: Noah… I’m all alone.
Blue Fairy: Hold on, Butterfly. I’ll be rig
ht there.
Present
I’m nervous and practically twitching with anxiety but only on the inside—as I sit next to the mother of the man who brings out the best and the worst in me. On the outside, I’m stone cold, hardly breathing as the Bentley speeds down the road.
“You’ve been silent for ten whole minutes,” Christina finally says.
“I’m just trying to wrap my mind around all of this.” I mutter, looking out the window.
“I understand it’s so sudden and out of the blue, but you see, dear,” she says in that soft tone of voice. “I’ve been searching for someone who’s honest to a fault, headstrong, resilient and cannot be bought for a very long time.”
“To be your what? Secretary? Your personal assistant?” I turn to look at her now. “What is it that you’re looking for?”
“Over the course of my life, I’ve had so many people work for me in various capacities, dear, but I can’t say with absolute certainty that I trusted any of them.”
“And why is that?”
I’m genuinely curious about this woman. What kind of mother did Noah have? From the stories I’ve heard from Astraea and Ivy, Christina Montreal was a kind, loving soul, but as I look at her now, I can’t help but think there’s more to her than just beauty.
She lost one son to suicide, and I wonder if she knows about Noah’s recklessness and his excessive drinking habits that might kill him one day—if I don’t get him first for being a dick.
“Because I never had the chance to pick them,” she says. “They were always shoved down my throat by people who pulled the strings of my life.”
It’s the sadness in her eyes as she says those words that floors me.
I wasn’t expecting her to look so vulnerable and I certainly wasn’t expecting to feel an overwhelming sense of kinship with this woman.
“You were controlled by someone else?” I can’t help but keep the bite of remembered pain. After all, I know the feeling well.
“From the day I was born,” she says. “One would think I bred for just that. To be a weapon or something to use to get something else in return.”
I stare at her, at a loss for words.
“You see, I went to the best schools money could afford. Private schools, summer vacations with my rich family friends. I wore the best designer clothes, hell, I had everything you can think of, but, my family was poor.” She looks away now, staring out the window. “My father was a gambler, and my mother—well, she was a debutante who came from money that is now controlled by my father. It didn’t take long for the well to run dry and for them to look at me as a source of income.”
“What do you mean?” I whisper.
“They wanted to sell me off to the highest bidder like cattle at a fucking fair,” she says sadly. “But I couldn’t stand that so, I ran away and ended up in—”
“Hollywood.”
She looks at me then, a surprised smile on her face. “You heard about that?”
“I saw a movie once, with you in it.”
“And what did you think?”
“I thought…” I trail off, choosing my words well. “I thought you reminded me so much of your son, I couldn’t help but smile.”
And there I go putting my business on the street.
“Interesting,” she muses and then her door is opened, and she steps out. I wasn’t even aware that we had arrived to… wherever this place is.
When I open my side of the door, I step out of the car only to look up at a huge, impressive glass spire that signals nothing but power. When did we even get to the city?
“You have offices?” I mutter, craning to look up at where the building ends, but it just keeps going, cutting through the clouds. Intimidating as hell.
“Of course,” Christina says, watching me take it all in. “Did you think we’re barbarians? I run an empire.”
I shake my head, hardly believing what I’m seeing.
“I can see that.”
“Good, now come on.”
I follow her into the sleek, impressive building and practically have a front row seat as I watch people tripping all over themselves as they try to get out of her way. Some greet her with huge, genuine smiles while others try to look busy and hard at work.
“Wow,” I whisper when we finally get to the elevators. “They both admire and fear you.”
“That’s how I like it,” she says with a small smile on her face. “But you don’t seem to fear me.”
“Oh, trust me, I’m doing my best to act like you don’t terrify me.”
“Oh good! At least one of you kids still fears me. Noah, George, Emmett and Alex they all dropped the habit when they were eight. Astraea and Ivy are sweethearts, but they don’t fear me.”
I glance at her. “Is that what you want?” I ask seriously, feeling like everything hinges on this one moment. “Do you want me to fear you?”
Christina looks at me, but she doesn’t say a word. I feel the elevator come to a stop. The doors slide open on the seventieth floor, and she elegantly steps out, removing her shades and gloves as she goes.
I follow after her, a bit confused by her non-answer. As soon as we step into the hall, we enter into yet another beautiful space, all gleaming, sterile and designed with expensive features and sleekness in mind.
I see the receptionists—all three of them, Jesus—stand up and wait for her to pass. They greet her and she mumbles her response back with a small, graceful wave.
“Yes, yes, I’m here,” Christina says, and they chuckle. “Now, this is Kimberly. In a few short minutes if things go well, whenever you see her, you’ll be seeing me.”
All eyes turn to me, and suddenly I’m fully conscious of what I’m wearing and the crazy ombre of colors in my hair.
I guess jeans, a silly top and lavender-grey hair just doesn’t cut it for a place like this.
I can just about guess what they’re thinking as they look at me from head to toe.
Judgement.
It’s always followed me, but there’s something about being judged by these people—who just literally heard Christina declare me as super important—that makes this even worse.
“Do you think you’re prettier than me?”
I shudder internally, trying to shake off my mother’s voice in my head.
“Uh, don’t you think we should talk about this bizarre right-hand woman thing some more before we tell people about it?” I whisper but she just shoots me a mischievous wink.
“Anyway, I’m expecting someone in a few minutes, but for now, I don’t want to be disturbed.” And with that, she strides past the open double glass doors and disappears into the office.
I stare after her, feeling like maybe I took the wrong step by diving into this ocean.
“Come on, Kimmy!” I hear her call from within the office.
“Err, that’s me.”
It’s lame. But I quickly make my escape, following after Christina. When I enter the office, I almost come to a screeching halt as I take it in.
Damn, is there an inch of this place that isn’t so damn beautiful and elegant? Everything seems like it’s straight out of a movie scene.
I take in the office, all dark colors and tones. Black leather couches around the sitting area, a big glass desk in front of floor to ceiling windows that overlook the city with an impressive chair right behind it.
But it just doesn’t feel right.
“I thought your office would be a little bit more…”
“Homier than this? You’re absolutely right,” she says, putting her bag down on the table around the sitting area, instead of at the desk where I assumed she’d sit. “This isn’t my office.”
“Then who?”
“It belongs to the CEO and majority shareholder of Montreal Inc.”
I think I already know the answer, but I ask anyway, stepping further into the office. “And who might that be?”
“Right now, it’s me,” she says, surprising me. “But in a few weeks, it wil
l be Noah, it has to be Noah.”
I frown as I see the worry displayed on her face.
“It has to be him?” I echo, walking over to the sitting area where she sits on one of the couches, watching me. “Isn’t it usually set in stone?”
“Dear, I think you’re clever enough to know that nothing is ever as it seems,” she says. “Now quickly before we run out of time, I told you that I was looking for someone with character like you, but I didn’t tell you what you’ll be doing.”
I listen attentively as she starts describing some of the responsibilities on her plate, and the weights she’s been carrying for ten years just to keep this company running.
“Basically, on the Montreal side of the pie, we deal with over a hundred different entertainment and sports divisions as well as in the fashion industry.”
“Your side of the pie?”
“I assume you already know about the four families of Westbrook Blues?” Christina says, an eyebrow raised. “The Kings, the Eastons, the Fields—”
“Don’t you mean the Beaumonts?”
“Ah yes, I’d forgotten that little plot twist,” she says with a shake of her head as if she’s still in disbelief. “There’s the new and improved Beaumont family and then there’s us, the Montreals.”
“Yes, of course I know all this, but I thought the whole ‘four families’ was just about Westbrook Blues?”
“Just Westbrook Blues?” she repeats. “Do you think all that chaos, all that struggle for power and supremacy between Philip King and that bastard who killed my friend, Richard Fields, was for a small town?”
“Honestly, yes. Though it seemed so…”
“Petty? Yeah, it would seem that way, but the struggle was for much more than that,” she says. “It’s always been more. Westbrook Blues, my dear, is just the beautiful town where the families chose to settle down and dig their roots in.”
“And so, what is all this then?” I ask, looking around, seeing the Montreal Inc logo embellished in steel on the glass table in front of me.
“This is the legacy,” she says with a note of awe and reverence in her voice. “This is dominance, a way of life that’s passed on from one generation to the next.”
Petty Rage: Westbrook Blues Book 4 Page 19