Heated: Shadows Landing (The Townsends #4)
Prologue
PROLOGUE
U pstate New York – 5 th grade
Wilder Townsend was the classic middle child, even if he wasn’t exactly in the middle of the family. Being sixth out of nine left him and Kane—the fifth—as the out of place numbers. The youngest three were the closest, and the oldest four were close. This left Kane and Wilder as the awkward floaters. They were both too young and too old at the same time, yet they couldn’t be more different. Kane was quiet and never asked for anything. Wilder was the opposite. He was loud and outgoing, and he might have been a little wild. With a name like Wilder, he always figured he had to live up to it.
Tonight though, he was nervous and wished he could blend into the background. Tonight was his first school dance for fifth through eighth graders. No number of charming smiles or silly jokes was going to distract from the fact that he absolutely could not dance.
Kane was already dressed and waiting for Wilder in the living room. Hunter was going with an actual girl as part of a group and had already left to do date-type stuff before the dance and Olivia was too busy studying to go.
Wilder looked in his mirror as he delayed joining Kane in the living room. He looked good. His hair was such a dark brown that it looked black. Half the Townsend kids had black hair, while the other half had a range of blond hair from Olivia’s beachy blonde to Kane’s brownish blond. They also had either blue eyes or gray eyes. Both Kane’s and Wilder’s were blue. Even if they didn’t have the same eyes, everyone could tell a Townsend. They all looked similar in build and they all had the same nose and mischievous smirk.
“Wilder,” Damon, the eldest of the Townsend nine, called out before opening the bedroom door. Damon was five years older than Wilder but had the same black hair. However, his dark gray eyes could look dark brown if he was angry or stormy gray if he was amused. He was the coolest older brother a kid could have. Wilder’s parents were great and he loved them with his whole heart but with nine kids, they were always busy. His mother was constantly taking care of the younger kids while Damon took care of the older ones since their father worked two, sometimes three, jobs to support everyone. “Why aren’t you ready? I’m driving you to the dance with Kane, right?”
Wilder nodded. “Yeah, um, I’m almost ready.”
Damon frowned. “What’s wrong?” Damon paused when Wilder didn’t answer. “Does it involve a girl? Do you need to talk about when to kiss a girl?”
Wilder felt his face flush. He didn’t want to tell Damon he’d already had his first kiss. For all the girls Damon dated and kissed, he was stricter than their parents about when his siblings should be kissing girls, and especially how they should treat girls. Wilder was one of the most popular boys in his grade. He’d had his first kiss at the end of 4 th grade, which Damon considered too young.
“No,” Wilder answered. “It’s about a girl, but not that way. I, um,” Wilder grimaced, “I don’t know how to dance.”
Damon’s creased brow relaxed as he stepped into the room and closed the door. “Okay, five minutes and I’ll have you good to go. First, most of the music will be fast. Here’s a simple move that will get you by ninety percent of the dances. If it’s one where there are dances with special moves, just use the bathroom or get a drink.”
Wilder watched as Damon danced and tried to copy him. It felt awkward, but at the end of five minutes he was passable. But he wasn’t finding it fun like others did.
“Slow dance. This one is a lot easier,” Damon told him. “Pretend I’m the girl. Place your hands on my waist like this.” Damon was right. Slow dancing was much more Wilder’s thing. He picked up on it in no time.
“Thanks, Damon. Dancing sucks, but at least I won’t embarrass myself.”
“You’re welcome. That’s what I’m here for. Stone”—the second oldest of the Townsend nine— ”is going to pick up Hunter at his after-party. I’ll pick you and Kane up at nine when the dance ends. Call me if something changes. Grab Kane. I’ll meet you at the car.”
Wilder and Kane rolled their eyes as Damon lectured them again on how to treat girls as he drove them to the dance. The Townsend brothers might be a rowdy pack but between their parents and Damon, they were gentlemen. If they weren’t, it wasn’t their mom or dad the brothers worried about. It was Damon.
“Remember what I taught you. You’ve got this. Have fun,” Damon whispered to Wilder as he got out of the car.
Damon had been right. He’d had fun. Well, with the slow dances at least. His moves snagged him a kiss from the girl he liked. The other dancing? Well, that sucked but he hadn’t been embarrassed. He just knew he didn’t like dancing.
* * *
Wilder snuck into the house at one in the morning. At least he thought he had when a voice came out of the darkness.
“Wilder. Garage. Now.”
Wilder groaned at Damon’s tone of command. Wilder kept his head down as he walked into the garage. They had a large garage that they’d all helped their dad to expand one summer. It held three cars and had room for a small home gym. Cars belonging to their father, their mother, and Damon were inside the garage for those hard upstate New York winters. Stone was the only other one with a car, a hand-me-down from Damon that he’d fixed up. He had to dig it out of the snow every day during the winter.
Wilder found Damon sitting on the bench with two hundred and fifty pounds racked on the bar for the bench press. “You know curfew is midnight when you’re in the ninth grade.” Damon had opted to skip college, much to his parents’ dismay, to become a mechanic and help with the kids. Damon never said anything, but all the older kids knew Damon helped pay for things the Townsend nine did, like hockey lessons for Stone or ballet lessons for the youngest, Penelope.
“Sorry. I lost track of time,” Wilder muttered as he tried to keep his head down.
It didn’t fool Damon though. “Look at me when you speak, Wilder.” Wilder lifted his head and Damon’s jaw tightened when he saw the beginnings of a black eye. “What happened?”
“Jax didn’t like Emma flirting with me.” Jax was a lacrosse player. He thought he was a tough guy since he was on varsity as a freshman.
Damon let out a breath and nodded. “Okay, Wilder. Here’s what we’re going to do. You’re a night owl like me. I know this since you can’t keep to your curfew if your life depended on it. I hear you still moving around at two and three in the morning. You meet me here every night, at midnight. Got it?”
Wilder frowned. “But this is your time. You’ve told us not to bother you when you’re working out.”
Damon rolled his eyes. “I know what I said, and that’s still true for everyone else. However, your ass better be here at midnight or I’ll come into town and find you. Trust me, you don’t want that. I’ll embarrass the crap out of you if I have to come find you.”
Wilder knew Damon didn’t bluff. He’d seen what Damon had done when Olivia, who was two years older than Wilder, had brought home a date. It wasn’t pretty. Olivia yelled. Damon smirked. The date ran out the door crying.
“Okay, but why?” Wilder asked.
“You need to channel your night-time energy into something that doesn’t get your ass kicked. Go change. You’re working out tonight before bed.”
Damon laid back on the bench and started lifting the bar full of weights as if it were nothing.
Every night for the rest of high school, Wilder met Damon at midnight to work out. Even when his curfew moved to one in the morning and even when he turned eighteen and stopped having a curfew, he still showed up at midnight. Damon and he lifted weights, boxed, and worked on fighting.
It was there, sitting on the worn, secondhand bench that Wilder opened the envelope and read it out loud. “Congratulations. You’ve been accepted . . .” Wilder paused and then looked up at Damon. “I got a fifty percent scholarship.”
Damon shouted and pulled him into a hug. “I knew you could do it!”
“But, Damon, that’s still fifteen thousand a year and it’s New York City. Not here.”
“I know, but it’s the best school for you. You’ll get a part-time job. And between Stone’s hockey money and my own garage starting to take off and Hunter’s military pay, we’ll take care of the balance.”
“But you’re already doing that for Olivia and Kane. You can’t afford—” Wilder began to argue but Damon just shook his head.
“You and Kane will pay us back by helping out with Forrest, Rowan, and Pen. Forrest and Rowan have both talked about graduate school. Townsends help each other. It’s what we do. Now,” Damon said, pulling out his checkbook and writing a check, “send in your deposit and start looking for jobs in the city.”
“You’re the best, Damon. Thank you. I won’t let you down.”
* * *
Wilder walked into his boss’s office at the hottest nightclub in New York City. He was about to start his senior year of college and had asked his boss for an internship in addition to his part-time job as a bouncer at the club. He’d been working there since he was a freshman. But now, he was going to graduate with a business degree and needed an internship. He loved the nightlife. He loved the club. He loved how every night was different yet also similar.
“You wanted to see me, sir?” Wilder asked as he stopped at the desk that overlooked the now empty dance floor and was a glance away from the bank of security camera feeds on a large television.
“I got your request for an internship,” Tommy Kantor said, looking up from the cover letter and résumé Wilder had sent him. “You were so green when I hired you, but you’ve proven yourself to me. You have an eye for people up to no good. You can diffuse most trouble with an easy smile and words, but when words aren’t enough you have no trouble ending a fight with one punch.”
“Thank you, sir. My brother taught me to fight and my sister, well, she’s in law school and her negotiating skills have rubbed off.”
“And you apparently have a head for business. I knew you were smart, but straight A’s? That’s impressive, kid. Now, do you want to intern with me because it’s easy or because you’re interested in nightclubs?” Tommy asked.
“Night clubs. I can’t dance worth a shit, but I love the clubs. I love the music, the people, all the moving parts that go on behind the scenes that all those people have no idea about, like working with vendors, marketing, security, and DJs all to give people an epic night out.”
Tommy pushed his glasses up his nose. His blond hair had turned white a decade ago. “You know it’s harder than it seems. Night clubs aren’t for the faint of heart. Drugs, crime, trafficking—it’s all part of what we deal with on a nightly basis and that’s not counting your cutthroat competitors who are more likely to be tied to the mob or criminal organizations than not. Are you sure you want to step behind the curtain?”
“I’m sure. I can hold my own.”
Tommy smiled and signed the paper from the school indicating Wilder would be interning with him. “I believe you can too. Now, let’s get down to business. I have an alcohol distributor who is being pressured by some old-school Italian mobsters to not distribute to me or they won’t load the trucks with our orders. The Italians have a stranglehold on the docks and distributing centers with the unions. We are having a meeting with the Italians in thirty minutes at the diner down the street to negotiate terms we can both live with. Watch and learn. Also, be prepared to negotiate and to use your fists. Here’s the contract we have with the distributor. Here’s what the Italians are pushing for.” Tommy handed him a contract and the notes he’d scribbled down from various talks with one of the mob families.
“What about the others? Are they also going to jump in and mess up our deliveries?” Wilder asked. He wasn’t stupid. He knew there were several crime families who ran clubs. The Russians were one, then the Italians, the Irish, and lately a Mexican cartel or two.
“The cartels know I won’t allow drugs. They leave me alone as long as I won’t let the Italians deal drugs either. Russians deal in people and arms. I also don’t allow that, not that they haven’t tried. But the club is too high profile. They tried once and got busted. They’re operating out of their own clubs now. The Irish mob is the other main threat since they also deal in alcohol and I’m hearing, drugs. But right now, they’re still too scared of the Italians to try to press for more territory. However, I’m hearing of negotiations between the two, and that could lead to trouble in the future.” Tommy stood up and groaned as he rubbed his back. “I’m getting too old to put up with this. Let’s go, kid. I guarantee you won’t learn this in school.”
* * *
Five years later the Italians were still a pain in the ass.
The first meeting Wilder had attended had been with Nikolas Luciano’s great-uncle. They’d come to terms, but only after Tommy leveled his own threat to have a buddy in the attorney general’s office look into the union responsible for loading the trucks with his alcohol orders.
Now, Nikolas had just taken over protection for this area of New York as his great-uncle began to bring this next generation into the family business. Rumors were swirling that his two grandsons were in the running for the next boss of New York.
Tommy had retired and offered Wilder the first chance to buy him out. Fifty million dollars. That was the price for the nightclub. Not even Stone’s pro hockey contract or the very lucrative specialty garage that Damon owned, or Olivia’s high-powered and high-paying position as an attorney could cover that cost. However, as Damon has promised, the Townsends supported each other.
Olivia negotiated the sale and Stone’s agent worked with his financial advisor to leverage the bank to agree to a business loan for Wilder. Damon, Stone, and Olivia had co-signed the loan too, which gave enough weight to the application for it to be approved. Even Kane threw in what he could for the down payment.
Wilder spent months fixing up the nightclub. Damon had come in every weekend and helped as well. Hunter, too, when he was on leave from Special Forces. Tonight WET, named for Wilder Elliott Townsend, was opening. That was unless Nikolas freaking Luciano was going to derail Wilder’s plans.
“This is looking nice,” Nikolas said, taking in the improvements Wilder had made. “I would sure hate for something to happen to all the hard work you’ve put into it.”
“I’ll bet you would make sure nothing happened to my club if I paid you monthly,” Wilder said with no humor in his voice. He knew a shakedown when he saw it. They thought he was weak and ready to be taken advantage of, even by a newbie like Nikolas. Well, the Irish mob owner of the club several blocks away learned that lesson this morning. The Russians learned it yesterday. The cartels will learn it when they try to infiltrate the club tonight. It was time for Nikolas to learn it.
“I think twenty thousand a month would keep things running smoothly,” Nikolas said in a bored tone while Rocco, his enforcer, stared Wilder down.
“No.”
Nikolas’s head snapped back to look at him in surprise. “No?”
“That’s right. No.” Wilder leaned against the bar, looking for all the world relaxed when he was anything but. “You can learn this lesson now, or you can learn it if you try to hurt me or my club. You may think I’m an easy target, but what you fail to realize is I’m tougher than Tommy. Tommy lived by old-school ethics and deals. I don’t. I won’t sit back and take threats. Instead, I’ll go after you. Why don’t you call your cousin on the docks? Go ahead, I’ll wait.”
“Rocco,” Nikolas said, gesturing to Wilder as he pulled out his phone to walk outside so he could take the call in private.
Rocco stepped forward and Wilder relaxed. The punch came and Wilder ducked it, quickly following up with an uppercut to Rocco’s huge chin. The man was a beast, but Wilder was more than prepared to take him down. Before Nikolas could hang up the phone, Rocco was on the floor and Wilder was casually leaning back against the bar again.
Nikolas stormed in, saw Rocco, and his frown deepened. “How the hell did you shut down a union? And what the hell did you do to Rocco?”
“One phone call and your family is back to work. However, I have my own conditions,” Wilder said, reaching for the bottle of bourbon and pouring three glasses. “One, you leave me and my club alone. No threats. No interfering with my deliveries. You pretend I don’t exist and I’ll pretend you don’t. Two, you’re never allowed into any of my clubs. Three, you break one or two and I’ll burn your entire family to the ground. I don’t give a shit if it’s your nephew, your cousin, or your mother—who we all know really runs the show. You come after me and I’ll come after you. I have my own contacts in Italy, remember that. Now, do we have a deal?”
Nikolas’s jaw was tight as Rocco began to groan. “Does this go for everyone else too?”
“It does. Think of me as Switzerland, Nik. You have my word on it.”
Wilder held out his hand and waited. Nikolas reluctantly held his hand out and shook it. Wilder smiled then and handed Nikolas a drink. He reached down and hauled Rocco up and handed him a drink. “To our deal and to the last time we ever see each other.”
The three of them shot the bourbon back and Wilder watched as they left the club and grinned. Damn, he loved his job.
* * *
Wilder had missed two calls from Damon. Something had to be wrong. Wilder moved to his private office at his newest club, WET Paris, and called Damon.
“We have a problem,” Damon said the second he answered.
“What is it?” Wilder asked, his body tense and ready to go to war. He’d earned the reputation the world over as a man who could back up his threats with action. It had been hard, but you don’t run legit nightclubs without pissing off powerful people. In the past couple of years, he’d invested the hundred million a year he made at WET New York into clubs in Miami, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, London, Paris, and Rome and was now looking at opening one in Rahmi.
“Olivia has a new client, Ryker Faulkner. Do you know him?”
“Yeah, he’s a shipping billionaire. What’s the problem?” Wilder asked.
“She just bought a house right down the road from him in Shadows Landing. It’s right outside of Charleston, South Carolina.”
“What the hell?” Wilder pushed out of his chair in his office. “Is he abusing his power and pushing himself on her?”
“I don’t know, but I sure as hell am going to find out. Our sister needs us, Wilder. Stone has signed onto the Charleston Pirates team. Hunter is transferring to a Special Forces group based in Charleston. Kane is coming too. Are you in?”
“Hell yeah, I am. Besides, Charleston doesn’t have an exclusive nightclub like WET and there’s a lot of old Southern money in that area. I think it’s time I visit and open a new club. You know, so I can be closer to my family.”
“Exactly. See you in Shadows Landing soon, brother.”