20. Mason
20
MASON
N one of this made sense. Not one bit of it. I’d been sitting in my dad’s office all day, going through his business accounts. Granted, my head was a little slow since last night had been brutal (but needed), and I’d been here since this morning. I couldn’t find any reason he should have been scared for his life.
The numbers were good. They were better than good. A solid profit had been coming in for years, and based on the projections, it didn’t look like it was going to stop any time soon. Why the hell had my dad been scared enough to take his life?
I shook my head and reached for my phone. I needed answers from my P.I.
Me: I need an update.
Lael: I know. There’s a reason for the silence. I’m still digging.
Me: Look into the shareholders. See if anyone is having problems and needs to sell.
Lael: On it. I’ll have Ben start looking tonight. You think someone is trying to buy shares secretly?
Me: Maybe.
Lael: That should be easier to find out. Looking into the Bennetts has proven a challenge. I’ll need to update you in person.
That surprised me. Lael was usually too in-demand to travel for a debrief in person. Whatever she’d found had to be significant.
I didn’t reply, and the desk phone rang a moment later.
It was the guard at the front gate. The offices were closed. They’d been closed the whole week, though we’d kept a full detail of security guards still on staff around the clock. When I came in, I’d told them not to disturb me.
I pressed the button for the speaker. “Yeah?”
“Sir, your daughter is at the gate.”
Whoa. What? I switched the feed to bring up the front camera, and sure enough, Maddy was behind the wheel of one of the cars we let her use. She was still grounded and shouldn’t have been away from home, but I could see how tightly she was gripping the wheel. She’d picked up her mom’s nervous habit of chewing her bottom lip.
“Send her through. Let Rich know as well.” Rich was the front desk guard. He’d buzz her in before she reached the door.
“Will do, sir.”
When she walked in carrying a latte, I had to suppress a grin. She paused, uncertain. “What?”
I shook my head. “Nothing. You just look more and more like your mom.”
“Oh.” She went to the chair in front of the desk and sat. She put the coffee on the edge of the desk before sitting back, hugging her knees to her chest. “Pumpkin spice. Don’t hate me. It’s pumpkin season.”
I didn’t care. I was just happy to see her. I’d drink anything she brought me. Which she knew.
I waited, but she didn’t say anything else for a few moments. She only watched me, her eyebrows pulling together.
I leaned back. “What’s up, kiddo?”
She bit her lip, her eyes widening before they fell to my arm. Her face cleared, and she leaned forward. “You got another tattoo?”
I glanced down. I’d almost forgotten, but she was right. The guys all got matching skull tattoos after I officially retired from the NFL. Myself. Logan. Nate. Channing. Matteo. But Logan wanted something just for him and me.
I ran my thumb over it. “It’s a tribal tat. Me and Logan. Not real original, but Logan liked the look of it.”
“A lot of guys have tribal tattoos.” She looked over the rest of my arm. “Tell me about the others.”
I half-grinned. She was stalling before getting to the reason she was here, but I knew she liked to hear about some of the rest of my tats. I had a few before football, but had been indulging myself once I joined the Orcas team. I pointed to the orca tattoo, starting there. “I got this one because of my time on their team, but also because orcas stand for family, longevity, protection, and community. Which to me, stands for you all. My family.”
She grinned, softly.
I pointed to the small butterfly tattoo on the side of my finger. “Because of your mother.” I held up the finger where I had the other butterfly tattooed under my wedding ring, then moved to another under the orca. “The astrological sign for Gemini, which stands for the twins. I wanted it small, but looking half-carved into me because when Nash and Nolan are older, I’ll get another tattoo for each of them. Their choosing. Then there’s yours.”
Her grin widened, her eyes shining.
“A lion.” My chest filled with emotion at the same time her chest seemed to puff up. “It’s what you chose.”
She added, almost under her breath, “It was my favorite animal when I was little.”
“Which never surprised me. You’re ferocious. You’re fierce, and kid, you have so much power. No matter where you stand, no one can take that away from you.”
Her eyes glistened.
I felt a pull in my chest because I meant it. This kid of mine was an apex predator. I only hoped she wouldn’t realize the extent of how strong she was until she could handle it in a responsible way, but she was everything a lion represented.
I had more, but it was time to get to other business. “Okay. Out with it, Maddy. What’s the reason you’re bringing me your favorite latte?”
Her gaze averted away, and she slouched a little. “Oh.”
She drew in a breath.
A moment later, Maddy mumbled something under her breath, sitting up straight, but still keeping her one knee propped in front of her on the chair. She began picking at her jeans, not looking at me. “So…” she began, her eyes lifting. “I need to ask you something, but when I ask, you’re going to want to know where I heard about this, and that means I’ll need to…” With a big breath, she rushed out, “IhavetocomecleanaboutsomethingIwenttoapartylastnightI’msorryDaddy.”
I took a minute to decipher that and leaned forward. “Sorry. What did you say?”
She frowned. “Huh?”
“Say it again. Slowly. With spaces between your words.”
She gulped, closing her eyes for a moment before she took a deep breath. Putting her own coffee aside, she pulled up her knee again and hugged both to her chest. Her eyes dipped. “I have to come clean about something. I went to a party last night, and I’m really sorry.” She lifted those eyes back to me. Pleading. “I’m sorry, Dad. I snuck out again.”
I sat back in my ch—my dad’s chair—and swept that wave of grief aside, focusing on my daughter. I knew her well. She was here for a reason. She just outed herself, which meant something more pertinent was coming on its heels.
I knew the signals. Maddy was not one to come clean so her conscience was cleansed. She didn’t work that way. I blamed myself because I wasn’t like that either. All of this was spelling more trouble was brewing and Maddy was about to deliver it at my front doorstep.
She certainly didn’t get this side of her from her mom, who was a saint after she got everything healed inside of her. I was a different matter, and the raging monster that had come out of me last night confirmed that. I’d passed this fucking gene, whatever it was, to my daughter. Jesus . I hoped Nolan and Nash hadn’t gotten it.
I extended a hand toward her. “I’m sorry.”
She stuck her bottom lip out. “Huh?”
I gave her a smile that wasn’t a smile. It was a warning, and she read it correctly, her eyes going wide.
I said, “I’m apologizing to you because I must need to have my hearing checked. What I thought I heard come out of your mouth is that you went to a party last night. And I know my daughter. She couldn’t have, because she’s grounded for breaking the rules already .” My tone hardened, and I leaned forward, letting her know how much trouble she was in. “You know the rules are that we know where you are, and you take your phone with you if you leave.”
Her mouth snapped shut as she flushed, rolling her eyes. “That defeats the point of going to a party. You can track my phone. Then you’d know where I was! What’s the point of sneaking out?”
“The point is that you’re alive!”
“I’m—”
“Who do you think you are?”
That stumped her. She blinked at me, dazed, not having a goddamn clue. I would’ve laughed if she hadn’t been my kid.
Her mouth turned down and she spoke slowly, a finger touching her chest. “I’m…Maddy…Kade?” She said it like she wasn’t sure anymore.
I wasn’t amused, and I didn’t have the patience to decipher whether she was truly confused or being a smartass. “Your dad’s a Hall of Famer. Your mom is an Olympic star. We recently moved back to this town, and your grandfather, who runs a multi-billion dollar company—”
“Used to run,” she muttered.
“What?”
“Used to run.” Her eyes lifted back to mine, bright with tears. “You said he runs, Dad. As in present tense. He doesn’t run it anymore. You do.”
Fuck my life. She was right.
I’d be taking over.
I knew that. I’d thought it, reminded myself of it, but feeling it in my bones and my body, looking into the future and figuring out how to keep this company running was a whole different issue. She’d just reminded me of how much our lives had changed, would change more.
I lost some of my steam, sitting back in the chair. This desk. It had been his, but it would be mine. My desk. I shook my head. I couldn’t get used to that. It was his. It would always be his. This office too.
I glanced around. “I’m going to take a different office.”
“What?”
I looked up at her and waved my hand. “Never mind. Keep digging that grave for yourself. You already ’fessed up. Come out with the rest of it.”
She flushed again. “Jeeez, Dad! Different terminology, please. We just buried Grandpa yesterday.”
“And not even ten hours later you were violating your grounding? Sneaking out. Leaving your phone—”
Her nose wrinkled. She hugged her knees to her chest again. “I took my phone with me. I just didn’t turn it on.”
I glared at her. “That’s not helping.”
“Come on, Dad! I came here to ask you a serious question. Serious enough that I’m getting myself in more trouble to do it.”
I eyed her, knowing bullshit when I heard it. “You’re coming clean because it benefits you to come clean.” I didn’t have a great feeling about what else my daughter was about to tell me. “Your mom and I still need to talk about Friday night. Good thing we waited, huh? We’ll just tack this on as well.”
Her mouth fell open. “Dad—”
“Logan Malinda Kade.”
She quieted.
“I love you, but my patience is wearing thin. Get to the point of why you’re here.” Seeing hurt in her eyes, I held a hand up and softened my tone. “I love that you sought me out. I love that you wanted to spend some time with your old man, especially because you’re here now, so after we get through this conversation, you’re in for the long haul. You’re staying the rest of the day.”
Her eyes bugged. She hadn’t considered that.
I lowered my hand. “But back to what brought you here in the first place.”
Her eyes lowered to her lap. “Did Grandpa kill himself because the company’s going bankrupt? Was Grandpa James doing something illegal, and he would’ve gone to prison and that’s why he…you know.”
Alarm shot through me. I knew I wasn’t going to like this conversation, but I hadn’t expected those words to come out of her mouth.
My forehead furrowed. “We never told you how your grandfather died. Where did you hear that?”
Her mouth opened again. She’d been caught once more. The party line had been that he had a heart attack. We’d kept everything under wraps. I knew there was a chance of a leak, a good chance, but so far, no press had found out how my father died. When we told the kids, we were specific in our wording. We’d told them his heart gave out.
Jesus . “Did you hear that at the party?”
Her eyebrows jerked up. “No! No. No, but Aurelia Avoy said the timing was suspect, that James Kade died when his company was on the verge of going down.”
Who the fuck is Aurelia Avoy? I scowled. “What exactly were her words?”
Maddy heaved a sigh and shrugged. “She said it’s too bad I moved to town when my family’s legacy was going into the shitter. She said her dad is going to buy Kade Enterprises and change the name to Avoy Enterprises, and it’s too bad we’ll have to move away because we’re, like, poor again.”
Maddy scowled and I blinked, seeing my scowl on her face. I adjusted mine to an annoyed glare. “Poor again?”
“Apparently.” She rolled her eyes, letting her legs stretch across the distance until her heels were on the edge of the desk. “Between you and me, Aurelia’s such an HBOTC.”
Christ . I was going to regret this. “What’s an HB…”
“HBOTC.” She growled, sneering. “Head Bitch of the Cunts.”
“Maddy!”
“What?” She shrugged. “She is. Think of all the evil popular girls in every movie you’ve ever seen and roll them into one. Then put her in a ginormous house. That’s Aurelia Avoy. I hate her.” A smug smirk gleamed. “But I know she hates me because she thinks Beltraine and his friends like me. It’s why I was invited to Traine’s party in the first place.” Her voice evened out. “They’re the popular guys in the senior class. They’ve been nice.”
Her eyes cast down, and she frowned slightly.
I didn’t like that look. Why was she frowning at that statement? Fuck . I had so many questions I wanted to ask, but even though we had a good relationship, Maddy was still a teen. She’d shut down if I started grilling.
Fatherhood was rewarding. I needed to keep thinking that. Rewarding, but it was the fastest way to drain me of any patience I had. I coughed, clearing my throat. Right. Be…casual? “So. Uh…”
Maddy looked up at me, and the corner of her mouth lifted. “I’m not interested in any of those guys, Dad. You don’t have to worry about me. No one tells me what to do. Pressuring me doesn’t work on me. I don’t go to my knees for anyone.”
Fuck. She was me. Which I knew, but seeing it in a female body was something else.
She added, “Except maybe for Max, but that’d be different.”
Jesus Christ. “Maddy!”
She blushed, grinning. “Sorry. I just didn’t want to say something and do the opposite, like, later. You know. Moving on because we don’t need to have that conversation yet.”
She was giving me heart palpitations.
She waved her hand to the side, dismissing. “The normal girl stuff doesn’t work on me either—like the catty stuff, you know. Rumors. Cyberbullying. Things like that. I mean, no one would ever cyberbully me. They go online and see who my parents are and change their minds real fucking fast . I get trolls sometimes, but that’s because of you guys, and I don’t take any of it to heart. Half the trolls are people from another country trying to mess with us anyway.”
“Can you stop swearing?”
“Dad,” she scoffed.
I felt my face grow hot. “I’m aware of my propensity, but…for the sake of me being your father right now and you being the underage child, can we pretend I’m a good role model? Cut the swearing.”
“Fine.” She huffed.
This kid. She was so nonchalant about all of this.
She reached forward to grab a stapler but kept speaking. “So anyway. Yeah. The prissy girls, that’s what I call them—”
“Unless they’re the HB…”
“HBOTC and yeah, unless they earn that title, but so far, only Aurelia Avoy has earned it. Trust me, she’s even worse than you think. I’m pretty sure she’s going to bully that Stevie girl —”
“What?”
She ignored me, messing with the stapler. “But the guys don’t really know how to deal with me either. They can’t sexualize me. That’s what they do to most of the girls. They try to pressure them in group chats and demand nudes. They don’t do that with me because, hello .” She motioned to me. “And also, like, I’m too athletic for them. Do you know what I mean? I’m almost like a boy, but I’m not. I’m a girl. I have a girl’s body, but my athleticism is as good as a guy’s. I know, I know.” Another eye roll. “I’m you, Dad, in like, Mom’s body, and that’s so weird to say, but I watched the documentary on you guys. It’s true. It’s so weird. Can you imagine?”
She pulled the bottom of the stapler down, turned it around and began pressing on it. Staples flew out, landing on the floor.
“So anyway.” She kept clipping the stapler, using it like it was a gun. “It also helps that Uncle Logan taught me how to throw a punch, but—”
This was going nowhere except raising my blood pressure. “Put the stapler down.”
She paused, eyeing me.
“Can we circle back to the whole thing about your grandfather?”
She stopped and stared at me, owl-eyed, lowering the stapler. She’d forgotten the whole reason she came here. “Right. Yeah. So that’s what Aurelia—”
“Yes. The HBI—”
Eye roll. “HBOTC, Dad. It’s not head bitch in charge. She ain’t in charge of me.” Her head rolled with the last statement, some sass coming from her.
“Maddy,” I groaned. “The cursing.”
“Right. Sorry.” She cleared her throat. “But technically the B word isn’t a swear word. It’s a female dog, which is so offensive to women. Errr. Maybe not. Is it? I don’t know. Okay. Anyway, like, I don’t like what Grandpa did, but this isn’t me trying to process those feelings. I know you and Mom are big on those conversations, or Mom is. You do it if you have to because you’re a good dad, and that’s what good dads do if they have to, but again, Dad. You’re like me. You’d rather come across a two-hundred-fifty-pound lineman than talk about your feelings, if you had a choice.”
I suppressed a groan. She wasn’t wrong, but there was no controlling her thoughts. She’d get back to the point…someday. I sat back and waited her out.
Maddy talked for a while about Uncle Matteo. I have no idea how she landed there. That progressed to the difference between horses used for therapy and those who raced. Somehow that led to the migration of orcas and how they’re the bullies of the sea.
That went back to football.
Which went to running.
Then to her cousin Sammy.
She came back around. “That makes me want to know if the company’s going to be sold to Aurelia Avoy’s dad. I just want a heads-up. Because, like, if that’s going to happen, I need to prepare for war. I’ll have to cyberstalk her and find out any dirt I can because I’m not letting that HBOTC hold it over me that her dad’s taken over my grandfather’s empire. Hel—I mean, no way.” She stopped a moment. “So, is it? Are we going to be poor again?”
I’d lost the context for everything in the last hour she’d been talking, except a few things stuck out. One, was high school like this now? Were they worried about whose father was going to buy whose grandfather’s company? Two, had it been like that when I was her age? We only cared about business in terms of whether we had money or not, but the way she was talking about going to war, that was familiar.
Also, we’d never been poor.
“Honey,” I started, speaking softly.
She drew in a breath.
“Where did you hear that your grandfather shot himself?”
She sucked in some air, her eyes bulging. “He shot himself? That’s how he did it?”
Fuck . “No. I—”
Tears began streaming down her face.
I’d made it worse. “Maddy—”
“Nolan.”
“What?”
“Nolan. She knew, Dad. She knew. She told us the night it happened. We knew before you even got home.”
I stared at her, not wanting to accept that, but I couldn’t dispute it. Nolan knew things when the only way was intuition. But they’d known? This whole time? “I’m so sorry, Maddy.” Fuck .
More tears slipped down, and she sniffled, trying to clear the emotion away. “I just need a heads-up. Are you going to sell Grandpa’s company?”
I shook my head. “No.”
She held onto my eyes and swallowed. “Really?”
“Really.”
She sniffled. “Promise me?”
I inclined my head, wishing again for the ability to take pain away from the people I loved. All I could do was be honest. “I don’t need to. The company’s fine. We’re not going to sell it.”
“But then…” She looked away, hugging her knees again. “Why?” Finally her full question came out, choked, “Why did he do it?”
My heart broke as my little girl slid open a door and let me see the pain she was enduring. It was a gift, though it shattered me at the same time. I wanted to pull her into my arms, but Maddy didn’t work that way. If she wanted comfort, she went to her mom. From me, she wanted truth.
“We don’t know. I—what I can tell you is that your grandfather said some words to me that suggested he felt he was under threat. He said he knew I’d be able to protect the company.”
“So the company is going under?”
I shook my head quickly as panic rose in her gaze. “No. I haven’t gone through all the accounts. It’s too much for that to happen in one day, but I’ve seen enough to know that the company is fine. It’s more than fine. It’s doing good, which I’m not surprised about. Your grandfather was a phenomenal businessman over the last twelve years. He built a strong empire. It’s not going anywhere, not that I can see.”
“Then why?” Her voice broke again.
Staring at her, seeing her pain, I had to remind myself that right now all I could do was love her. “I don’t know, but we’re going to find out. That I can promise you. We will find out.”
She shook her head, looking away. “I don’t think it’ll ever make sense, but if someone made him do it, that’ll make some sort of sense. Right? And if someone did make him do it, that’s who’ll pay.”
When she said those last words, with a promise of vengeance, I didn’t know what to say. If someone hurt you, you hurt them back. I used to live by that mantra. Apparently it was genetic.
I hadn’t thought that way since college, but here it was again. Coming from my daughter.
I didn’t know the right way to handle this. “I love you, Logan Malinda Kade.”
Some of her anger melted, and she rested her chin against her knees. “I love you, too, Dad.”
I coughed. “Don’t tell Mom about the HB—about that terminology. Or your siblings.”
She rolled her eyes and scoffed. “No kidding.”