Chapter 35 Lance
Lance
I make it as far as my mother’s garden before my legs stop cooperating.
The noise from the party is muffled out here. Music and laughter and champagne-drunk congratulations bleeding through the walls like something from a different planet. The air is cold and it smells like October, and I lean against the stone wall of the terrace and try to remember how to breathe.
She said yes.
She looked at me across the table with a diamond the size of a small country in a velvet box, and I told her to say yes.
Because what the fuck else was I supposed to do?
And how did Art even afford that?
My hands are shaking. I stare at them like they belong to someone else, and then my fist connects with the stone wall before I register the decision to swing.
Pain explodes across my knuckles, and I welcome it because at least it’s something I understand.
At least it follows rules I know. Action. Then consequence.
Not like the rest of this.
“That wall’s been standing for eighty years. I’d appreciate if you didn’t bring it down tonight.”
I turn. Paxton is standing at the edge of the terrace, champagne flute in one hand, the other in his pocket. His suit is pristine, like it always is, and his expression is unreadable. He looks exactly like our father, and looking at him right now makes me feel sick.
“Pax.”
“You left in a hurry.” He walks toward me, his shoes clicking against the stone. “Before the congratulations. People noticed.”
“People can fuck off.”
His eyebrows rise a fraction. That’s a lot of emotion for Paxton. He studies me, his gaze going from the split knuckles to my clenched jaw. Probably wondering why I’m standing in his garden in the dark instead of inside toasting my best friend’s engagement.
“It was rather rude of Art to commandeer my party to make a grand statement about a girl his father clearly doesn’t like.”
I let out a sharp huff, my shoulders slumping. “Yeah. Well, Art’s been a piece of shit lately.”
It’s the most honest thing I’ve ever said to Paxton.
He takes a step closer. “You know you can talk to me, Lance.”
“Dad teach you how to lie like that?”
“He taught me many things… Mainly, he showed me what kind of man I don’t want to be.”
My gaze snaps up and for the first time in months—years, if I’m really being honest—I take in Paxton without the jaded gaze of my father blurring the view.
An idea, reckless and fucking stupid, percolates in my brain. It tingles at the base of my skull and drips down my spine, until it snaps into place with a rightness I can’t deny.
“I need to talk to you,” I say.
“Clearly.”
“Not here.” I glance at the windows. “Somewhere private.”
He doesn’t ask why. That’s the thing about Paxton. He doesn’t waste time on questions when the answer is already standing in front of him, bleeding. He’s observant and calculated. That’s something he learned from our father.
“Come to the study.”
I nod and he leads me across the terrace, past the fountain, and through a side door into his office.
It’s different than it looked when my father was still here. Back then it was dark wood, leather chairs, and a desk that cost more than most people’s houses. And all of that’s still there. But now it’s more human. More Pax.
His computer has a screensaver of the Enterprise from Star Trek, cutting through a star field.
My lips twitch at the sight of it. It’s been his wallpaper since he was a kid.
Jules used to tease him about it, and Alex once changed it to the Death Star as a joke.
Pax didn’t speak to him for two days afterward.
There’s a framed picture on the bookshelf of him and Tiffany at their wedding. Another one on his desk of all of us—him, Jules, Alex, Ty, Rosie, and me—from when we were kids on a camping trip, our arms slung around each other, and toasted marshmallow with graham cracker crumbs on our lips.
I stare at that picture for a long moment, my throat swelling, and a deep, throbbing ache rises in the middle of my chest.
He closes the door, locks it, and gestures to the chair across from his desk.
I don’t sit. I can’t.
“Drink?” He moves to the bar cart.
“No.”
He pours himself one, even though he already has champagne, and settles into his chair. He watches me pace for a few seconds, his expression patient in a way that reminds me he’s spent his entire life managing people and crises and family disasters with the same calm efficiency.
The words sit in my chest like live grenades.
I’ve held this for six years. Held it through the fights and the blood and the nights I couldn’t sleep and the mornings I couldn’t look at myself.
Held it through Dad’s one rule—the only thing we’ve ever agreed on—because the alternative was blowing this family apart.
But Genevieve has a ring on her finger and a father who’s gone dark and a blond man who stalks her.
And Art is no longer mine.
So, I can’t hold it anymore.
“I’m going to tell you something, and it’s going to change how you see everything,” I say. “Our family. Art. Dad. Me.”
Paxton’s glass pauses halfway to his mouth. He sets it down. “I doubt that, but all right.”
“There’s a fighting ring that runs through the entire East Coast, and Freddy brought it to Rosebrook Falls.
It’s called the Lye. It’s been operating underground, beneath the tavern and off the books, funded by Dad’s friend Brutus.
Sometimes it’s just throwing bets to make money. Other times it’s…worse.”
I stop pacing and look at him.
“I’m one of the fighters.”
Paxton doesn’t move. His face doesn’t change. But something shifts behind his eyes—a recalculation maybe. It’s rapid and precise, like watching a computer reprocess every piece of data it’s ever been fed.
“How long?” he asks.
“Six years.”
“Since you were eighteen.”
“Yes.”
“Myrddin runs it?”
“Yes. I mean, not personally. Freddy did. And Benny Voltaire.”
Paxton scoffs. “Fucking Voltaires.”
I drop my hands. “Can you focus, please?”
“And Art?”
That spot behind my rib cage aches, like an open wound being topped off with salt.
“Art got into some gambling trouble with Myrddin back in the day, and Dad saw an opportunity for a solution. Maybe it was Freddy’s idea, but the result was the same.”
Paxton goes very still. “What solution?”
“He offered me up. Went to Myrddin and said, ‘Take my son. Let him fight it off.’”
The silence that follows is the loudest thing I’ve ever heard.
Paxton picks up his whiskey. Takes a sip. Sets it down. His hand is steady, but when he wraps it around the glass again, his knuckles go white. Then his fingers start a rhythmic tap on the desk.
“Dad did this,” he says. “And Art let you take the fall for him?”
I grit my teeth and nod.
“Why now?” His voice is level, controlled, but there’s a timbre underneath I recognize, because I’ve spent my whole life learning to sound exactly like that.
It’s the sound of a man holding himself together so he doesn’t snap.
“Because I’m in love with Genevieve.”
My heart stutters. It’s the first time I’ve admitted it, and it settles over me like a warm blanket.
His brow lifts. “You’re in love with your best friend’s fiancée.”
“Don’t call her that.” I groan, rubbing at my chest.
“Well, that’s what she is, as of about twenty minutes ago.”
“This shit is serious, Pax. I’ve done horrible things. Awful fucking things, that I don’t ever want to come back on this family. But I can’t let her get stuck here.”
He listens as I pour out my heart and bleed in front of him. I go through everything I’ve done. Everything she’s done to me. Her father, Art’s shift from my best friend to a stranger. The blackmail, the fear, the fucking terror I feel knowing Genevieve’s being stalked.
“So you need my help,” he says.
“I’m asking you to be my brother. And to be the man our father made you.”
Our eyes meet.
“I need your resources. Your reach. I need to get her to Boston, and she needs to be untraceable.”
Paxton leans back in his chair. His fingers tap once on the armrest and then stop.
“Are you okay?”
Three words. Three simple words. And they break me into a thousand pieces.
My eyes burn and I look away.
“No,” I say. “I haven’t been okay in a long time.”
He nods once. Doesn’t push. Doesn’t try to comfort me, because Paxton doesn’t know how to do that, and we both know it.
But he reaches for his phone, and when he speaks again, his voice has shifted.
The brother is gone. The CEO is here. The man who runs an empire and dismantles problems with the efficiency of a surgeon.
I watch him work, my mind tumbling from relief that I’ve shared this burden and fear that I’ve just made everything worse.
“Two days,” he says. “I’ll have a car that can’t be traced. A property in Boston that’s not in any Calloway name. Cash, not cards. New phones. I’ll set up a security detail that reports directly to me.” He pauses. “And Lance?”
“Yeah?”
“When this is over, you and I are going to have a much longer conversation about our father.”
It’s not warmth, exactly. It’s not a hug or a declaration. But it’s Paxton’s version of “I love you.” It’s a promise that he’s going to handle this, and a warning that whoever did this will pay.
“Thank you, Pax.” My voice cracks.
“Don’t thank me yet.” He stands, buttoning his jacket. “Thank me when you’re out.”
He moves toward the door, then stops. Without turning around:
“Six years?”
“Six years.”
His hand tightens on the doorknob, and his shoulders drop just enough for me to see the weight land.
Then he straightens and walks out.
I stand in his office alone, my knuckles bleeding from where I smashed them against the stone, the sounds of the party filtering through the walls.
In the main room, my best friend’s fiancée is wearing a ring she doesn’t want.
And in two days, I’m getting her out of here.