Chapter 41 Coffee Milk and Cigarette Smoke
COFFEE MILK AND CIGARETTE SMOKE
Simone
The differences between Ezra Huntington’s little offshoot of The Huntington Group and Blackguard Holding were evident from the moment I approached the decrepit brick building at the edge of town in Woonsocket, Rhode Island.
The crumbling factory was bracketed by a river on one side, train tracks on the other, completed by the stench of sewage that seemed to perfume the entire city.
Every instinct I had told me I should run back to the train station to avoid getting mugged or worse.
But this was the only way.
The forty-minute train ride from Boston had given me time to think about what I was going to say. Who I was going to talk to.
How, exactly, I was going to get back my family’s farm.
“It’s different than his dad’s organization,” Selena had told me when I called her on my way to South Station.
“Ezra is trying to get out on his own, so you won’t find him at the headquarters in Providence.
And I guarantee if you go to his dad, you won’t get what you want at all.
Trust me, I tried that once and it did not go well. ”
You could have gone back to Brendan.
I pushed that thought away as his brother’s words echoed louder: Your boyfriend here is a lying piece of shit who sold your family’s farm to the highest bidder.
How could I possibly trust Brendan to make things right when he was responsible for this in the first place? Even if he had needed to give up the farm to save Kylie, how could he have kept something like that from me?
He had known the whole time. While he had shaken my father’s hand and listened to stories about my mother. While he made love to me in her bakery and whispered fantasies of our future there.
When he told me he loved me and wanted me, right there, forever.
No, I couldn’t go to Brendan for help now. I couldn’t trust him at all.
The heavy, if dented, steel door opened with a creak as I entered the building. Inside, I was greeted by a fairly standard lobby, even if it bore signs of neglect in the stained ceiling tiles and walls and the odor of stale cigarette smoke.
A tired-looking receptionist looked up from a desk where she was smacking on gum while doing her nails. Her expression was half irritable, half surprised, like I was the last thing she expected to encounter at her job…receiving people.
“Who are you?” Her thick Rhode Island accent existed, just like the state, somewhere between New York and Boston.
Cautiously, I approached the desk. “Er, my name is Simone Bishop. I was told I could find Ezra Huntington here.”
“He expectin’ you?”
I shook my head. “No. But it’s very important.”
“No appointment, no meetin’.” The woman went back to filing her nails.
I frowned. She didn’t look up again.
I put my hand on the desk, which immediately made her sit up with a spark of challenge. “Look, I’m not leaving until I see him.”
I could practically feel Brendan in the back of my mind, that sly dimple making an appearance as he looked on. That’s right, angel. Show her some of the devil I put in you.
I shook the thought away and persisted. “Tell him it’s about a deal he recently made for Dandelion Farm. With Brendan Black. He’ll want to see me.”
The receptionist dropped her nail file without looking at it but took an extra second to pick up her handset. I had no doubt that she was the type who would throw a punch at me for looking at her wrong in any other setting. Maybe this one too.
Channeling Selena’s brashness and Brendan’s intensity, I forced myself not to look away. This was a matter of survival.
It worked. The girl made the call. “Some broad here wants to see you. No, I don’t know her. Says she knows Brendan Black, though. Something about a farm.”
She waited while another voice replied.
“Get your own fuckin’ coffee milk, Ez. I’m here to sit at the desk and answer the phones, not run your goddamn errands.” After dropping the phone back in its receiver, she went back to her nails and spoke without looking at me. “He’ll be out in a minute.”
I paced the length of the reception area, reviewing everything I had learned about the Huntingtons on my way here.
They were originally from Providence, with the company headquartered there.
Ezra was an only child, and the rumor was that he ended up in Woodstock for the last two years of high school because he’d been kicked out of four different private schools for dealing drugs, so his mother had taken him to their vacation property to finish school and keep him out of trouble.
He’d graduated, but not without supplying half our class with any and all paraphernalia needed for the parties thrown in deserted fields and under the cover of the forest. Apparently, he was still in that business if he was loaning money to sell psychedelics.
He was dangerous. Enough to take a child from her mother.
But maybe he would be willing to bargain for the right price.
“Simone Bishop. What the fuck, girl? You’re even hotter than your sister.”
I turned at the sound of my name as a man I barely recognized walked into the lobby. He looked nothing like the lanky kid I remembered from high school, but he still dressed like him in worn jeans, a ratty sweater, and a beanie pushed back over a mop of messy brown hair.
He clearly recognized me, though. “Where the fuck have you been all these years? Selena let me get some every now and then, but damn, I think I was looking at the wrong sister.”
I fought a cringe at his crass words as I allowed him to brush a kiss to my cheek in greeting. Now I knew where the cigarette smoke came from.
“Good to see you too,” I lied.
“I should think so.” He cocked his head, still openly looking over my body, which was clothed in a light summer dress and a sweater. I wasn’t going for revealing—I never really did—but he made me feel like I was half naked. “So what can I do for you?”
“You, er, you recently made a deal with Brendan Black for the, um, return of Selena’s kid?” I said softly to avoid the ears of the receptionist, who kept casting scornful glances my way.
Ezra’s brows knitted together. “I, uh, did, yeah. He told you about that, did he?”
“I’d like to discuss it, if you don’t mind.”
“Look, Simone, I know it’s your family’s farm and all, but—”
“Please.” Fighting nausea, I forced myself to trail a flirtatious hand up his arm. “It would mean a lot.”
His beady eyes narrowed, but he seemed curious, at least. “Sure. Follow me to my office.”
Every cell in my body screamed not to follow this man into a private room, but I didn’t have much of a choice. After all, what had I come here for if not for the chance to change his mind?
I followed him around several winding corridors into the building, past one room where men who looked just like him were jabbering on phones and taking what sounded like bets while people in another were smoking and gesturing toward a big map on the wall of a valley that looked a lot like the area around Woodstock.
He kept going, then opened the door to an office containing a battered desk, a few chairs, and a lot of posters featuring scantily clad women holding beers alongside a map that matched the other one I’d seen.
Yes, it was definitely Windsor County, dotted with a bunch of new planned projects that definitely weren’t there now.
“It’s…nice,” I said lamely. God, I was terrible at this.
“Take a seat.” Ezra did the same behind the desk. “You want?” He opened a mini-fridge behind him containing a variety of alcoholic beverages.
“No, thank you. You bought my family’s property.”
“Straight to the point, huh? Fine by me. Technically, I was given your family’s mortgage.
Good thing too, although maybe not for you.
But your dad hadn’t paid taxes on the place in five years, and he’s well behind on the mortgage payments too.
I think you already know why I wanted it.
Your ‘fiancé’ originally had it for the same reason. ”
Something thick in my throat made it hard to swallow. I hadn’t stopped to wonder why Blackguard possessed the mortgage to begin with—banks sold them to each other all the time, so why shouldn’t the holding company do that sort of thing?
Owen’s anger, however, made more sense. Clearly, they’d been planning something with the “investments” he’d mentioned. Possibly something similar to the development plans tacked to Ezra’s wall.
“Congratulations, by the way.” Ezra cracked open a can of beer. “When’s the big day?”
I didn’t answer. Whatever defined my relationship with Brendan Black was purely legal now, and it had no bearing on this situation.
I still couldn’t bring myself to refute it, though. “I want to pay off the mortgage. Or do whatever is needed to get rid of my father’s debts. What would it take to reverse the sale?”
Ezra eyed me over his beer for a moment, then set it down and sat forward. “That’s a complicated question. From a purely business standpoint, there’s no reason for us to sell. Even to someone as cute as you.”
I wanted to laugh. Or maybe cry. It was ludicrous, this idiot in his record-store-owner drag, acting like he was the Wolf of Wall Street. And yet, this fool held my family’s future in his palm.
“Name your price,” I said. “The value of the mortgage plus its interest through term, I’ll pay it. Plus twenty percent.”
That would completely drain my bank account. But I’d solve that problem tomorrow.
Ezra sat back in his chair and kicked his boots up on the desk as he took another drink of his beer. “You’re cute. But do you even know what’s owed on that property?”
“My dad leveraged it in the nineties to upgrade equipment.”