20. Rowan
ROWAN
It felt cathartic, in the way that finally purging a virus from your system feels.
Beating the shit out of my twin brother has been a long time coming.
Normally, I don’t have a violent bone in my body, but this time, I made an exception.
Honestly, if Declan hadn’t been there to call me off, I wouldn’t have stopped until Kian was unconscious.
“Where’s Leah?” I ask when I look up from scrubbing up the blood splatter on the floor of Leah’s condo and see Emmett walk inside.
“She’s safe. She’s in my penthouse,” Emmett answers, looking between Declan and me and the spots of blood that we haven’t scrubbed up yet. “Tell me you didn’t kill him and bury his body on the property grounds.”
Emmett is joking, of course, and his nervous chuckle afterward makes that apparent. But the nervousness also makes clear that there’s a small part of him who knows I wanted to bury our brother.
“He’ll live to see another day,” Declan says dryly as he reaches into Leah’s freezer to get some ice for his hand.
He landed the first punch, and it was, admittedly, a good one.
“Good,” Emmett responds. “Murder would be a PR nightmare for the company.”
“Leah filled me in on what happened,” Emmett says as the three of us sit down at the table. “I can’t believe he actually confessed.”
“The question is, what do we do now?” Declan asks. “There are a whole lot of moving parts here. None of them are exceptionally good.”
“And Walsh?” Emmett asks.
“Walsh is mine. I’ll have the lawyers on him by tonight. We know what he’s owed now, so we can make him an offer.” Declan sets the ice down. “That’s the part I can’t fix in an afternoon. What I want to know is what we can fix.”
“Kian tricked Leah out of a home,” I say. “That’s the first thing he took from her. I think we give her one back. One that nothing and no one can take away from her again.”
“Agreed,” Declan says without a moment’s hesitation. “I’ll pull up the deed to this condo, and we can all sign it. It can be hers, and hers alone.”
Emmett smiles at the idea. “I like it. Plus, it keeps her right here inside the safety of Koi Tower where we can watch over her.”
Once the floor is clean, Declan goes to handle the paperwork, and Emmett goes to bring Leah back down so she can try to finish her work.
That will be hard for her, moving past what just happened.
She just found out she’s got a target on her back, and the man who put it there was supposed to care about protecting her.
It makes me want to beat Kian up all over again.
Later that day, when Declan returns with the deed, I go to his penthouse. I ask to be the one to bring it to her.
“I think I may have scared her.” I add my signature last. “When I told her to leave and let us deal with Kian. I don’t want her replaying me beating her ex-boyfriend bloody every time she looks at me.”
“Of course.” Declan puts a hand on my shoulder. “But Rowan, I don’t think Leah scares that easily. Give her some credit instead of worrying about losing something you haven’t even let yourself have yet. She might surprise you.”
He’s not wrong. Leah surprises me constantly. She keeps seeing past my walls, past my face, and hopefully she saw past my tone earlier too. I want to protect her every bit as badly as Declan and Emmett do. I just show it in a quieter way.
I take the deed down to her condo and knock softly. She’s been startled enough today.
“Hey,” I say when she opens the door.
“Hey. Is everything okay?”
“Yeah. Can I come in for a minute?”
“Of course.” She steps back to let me in, and I can see the stress settled on her face.
“Are you okay, Leah? I know you’ve been put through a lot. I hope I didn’t frighten you before.”
“No, you didn’t.” That’s a relief. “But I’m still scared. That Walsh guy is still out there somewhere, looking for his money. And for me.” She sighs. Her normally bright eyes are heavy.
“We won’t let anything happen to you.” I’ve never meant anything more. “Declan, Emmett, and I are going to keep you safe.”
“Thanks.” She musters a smile. “But I don’t see how the three of you can keep me safe forever.”
“Let’s start with this.”
I hold out the deed.
“What’s this?”
“The deed to this condo. It’s in your name only. No strings. Whatever happens with Walsh, or with Kian, or with any of us, this condo belongs to you now. No one can take your home from you again.”
“My home?” Her voice cracks on the last word. “I’ve never actually owned anything. Not even growing up. Everything in my life has felt borrowed, like I’ve just been bounced from one thing to the next.”
“That can stop now.” I sweep a strand of hair back over her shoulder. “It can stop here. This is your home, if you want it.”
“I’m not sure I can accept this, Rowan.”
“Why not?”
“I know money isn’t a barrier for you guys, but this is a whole condo. It’s not a nice bottle of wine or a fancy dress.”
“I know what my brothers and I are giving you. Take it, Leah. Please.”
After a moment, she accepts, and her smile is all the thanks I need. Although she also tells me thank you at least a hundred times.
This is right. My brothers and I can feel good about this. A home that’s hers, and close to the three of us.
I get ready to leave, we say our goodbyes, and my phone rings in my pocket. Declan’s name is on the caller ID.
“I’ll let you get back to work.” I let myself out. “And don’t worry, Leah. You’re safe here.”
I’ve barely stepped into the hall and answered Declan’s call before that promise is tested.
“Bad news.” His voice is less steady than usual. “I just got off the phone with the attorneys. I had them contact Walsh and offer to settle. The original amount Kian borrowed, all the interest Walsh has piled on, and a considerable sum on top for his trouble.”
“And?”
“He refused.”
“What do you mean, he refused?” I head for my own penthouse. “Then offer him more.”
“I did. I told him to name his number.”
That’s a big escalation. Declan is the most careful negotiator of the three of us. I’ve never seen him hand the other side a blank check.
“But Rowan.” His voice tightens. “He wouldn’t give me one.”
“Then what the hell does he want, if not money?”
“I think he does want money,” Declan explains. “I think he’s seeing how much he can get. If I had to guess, Walsh figures our family will pay a lot more than the debt is worth if he keeps the pressure on. And that’s not all.”
A pause. My head fills it with every awful possibility.
“He’s given us a deadline. Friday.”
“A deadline for what? If he won’t give you a number, how the hell are we supposed to meet a deadline?”
“I think he plans to keep raising the stakes so that by Friday, we’re willing to give up everything to make him stop coming after Leah.” Declan lets out a breath. “That’s his game. And to his credit, it’s a good one.”
I hate that he’s right. Walsh has us by the balls.
We have limits on what we can give him. Our companies are tied to shareholders and investors, and we can’t walk away from our commitments.
It won’t help anyone, including Leah, if we implode everything we have.
Our resources are part of how we protect her.
And I refuse to let Kian cost us anything else. He’s cost enough.
“We don’t give that asshole a penny over what’s actually owed.” I hear the edge in my own voice. “I know we’d all give anything for Leah. But this is how bullies work. Give in once, and they smell weakness and come back for more.”
“Agreed. The way to end this and keep her safe is to take Walsh down without giving him what he wants. I’ll keep the lawyers negotiating and put a private investigator on him. If there’s leverage, we find it by Friday.”
“And if we can’t?”
“Then we’ll figure it out. Right now, we focus on keeping Leah and Madeline safe. Do me a favor and check that Leah’s security detail is on alert.”
As soon as I hang up, I walk the floor. An armed guard is standing where he should be, in the hall outside her door.
“If Leah leaves, you go with her,” I tell him. “Any problem, you call me directly. No more shift changes that leave her unguarded. I don’t care if it’s five minutes. Someone is on her at all times.”
“Yes, sir.”
It helps, a little. I’d feel better with her upstairs in my penthouse, where I could glance over every few minutes and know she’s fine, the way I did at the studio. But that’s a bad idea for a different reason. In my home, she’d be safe from Walsh and not safe from me.
Put her in my home for a night, two nights, a week, and I know exactly what happens. I stop resisting. She lets me. And when it’s over, neither of us will know whether we had something real or just a better version of what she already had with a man who has my face.
That’s dangerous too.