Chapter 6 - Fitz
FITZ
“Idon’t see why I have to go.”
“It’s your fucking party.” Crawford scowls at me. “The Billionaire Ball.”
“That’s not the real name.” I blow out an aggravated breath.
“Buck up, asshole. I’m being paid to be here, but you’re not paying me to deal with your bad attitude.”
“I’m over this event.”
“It’s only the third time you’ve hosted it.”
I regretted it after the first time. All the billionaires who have something to sell, who need publicity, or who are flat-out bored come to this event. We have folks coming out of the woodwork, flying in from Monaco, from Japan, from London.
Around us, workers stream around setting up for the party. Florists wind flowers around the columns and set up oversized bouquets on the food tables. Expensive, difficult-to-procure alcohol is being delivered to the various bars in the ballroom under armed guards from Crawford’s security company.
“It could be nice. Give you an opportunity to socialize with people who are not family members. Maybe learn how to interact in a healthy manner with members of the opposite sex.” My brother gives me a knowing look.
“What? No. I don’t need that.” I scowl at him. “Women who are with me leave very satisfied sexually. They even get a goody bag and breakfast.”
Crawford stares at me for a beat.
“Like I said, you need practice with women. I can’t tell if you’re a sociopath or just emotionally stunted.”
I trail after my older half brother to the library off the main ballroom, where he has people checking for hidden bugs, weapons, and poison. My collection is better than the stacks of alien porn Winnie has in her café. All antiques, first editions.
Crawford surveys the room with a practiced eye. “Move the books too,” he tells his team.
“I don’t think that’s necessary. It’s not like I just let the riffraff wander around the Soundview Hotel.”
“If anyone gets hurt in my hotel, it’s my little brother’s neck on the line.” Crawford reaches out a hand and ruffles my hair, messing it up. “It has to go flawlessly. I got a ton of new business after doing security at the last event.”
“Everyone’s benefiting off this event except me,” I complain.
“Salinger wants cash investors in his investment fund. So be charming. Stop brooding about that girl.”
“What girl?” I can tell his employees are listening to our arguments.
Crawford grabs me by the collar of my jacket and drags me into the billiards room.
“There’s eighty-year-old cognac in the bar. Take a load off.” I keep the tone light.
He throws me on a sofa. “Don’t play dumb. Faulkner says—”
“Let me stop you right there. Faulkner is an emotionally stunted groundhog. Don’t listen to a thing that comes out of his mouth.”
“You are not going to turn into our father.” Crawford’s expression goes scary dark.
“What? Of course not. I’m a hedonist. Dad could never pull off this smoking jacket, for one,” I remind him, running my hands down the brocade.
“You need to leave that girl alone.”
“Uh-oh, or you’re going to bring out the big guns?” I flop down on my velvet sofa and put my feet up. “Winnie likes me. That’s all you need to know.”
My phone pings. My hand twitches.
Crawford snatches it before I can grab it. “You have cameras in her house?”
“On her house.”
He holds up the phone. On the screen, there’s an older woman furiously digging up the raggedy-looking garden mums in her yard.
“Hey, I was going to do that.” I sit up.
Crawford shoves me back down. “You’re watching her while she showers?”
“Well, not via a camera—that would be weird. I stand outside of her bedroom. Honestly, people of Faulkner’s generation, they don’t want to leave their bedroom, and then they wonder why they can’t get a girlfriend.”
“You lied to me. You said you needed all these cameras to watch your collection of pets.” Crawford bares his teeth.
“They aren’t pets. They’re rescue animals. You can’t own a tiger. They belong to the earth.”
“You’re stalking some girl.”
“Not some girl. My girl. I’m allowed to keep an eye on my things.”
“This girl”—Crawford throws the phone on my chest—“is not your girlfriend. Stay the hell away from her.”
“Now, that’s not fair.”
“You’re banned from that shop. You better not get a restraining order.”
“Ye of little faith.”
“Your mother should have drowned you in the horse trough she gave birth in.”
I look up, smirking at Crawford, who’s standing menacingly in front of the fireplace, light from the flames flickering over the planes of his face. A demon hunter here for vengeance.
“Salinger needs to stop letting you watch so many cartoons.”
“Um, it’s anime, and it made me the man that I am today. Billions of dollars of discretionary income and all.”
“He said you’re breaking into her house.”
“She enjoys my notes. And it’s not breaking and entering. I’m not taking anything except her trash. Seattle doesn’t do trash pickups on holidays, and Winnie always seems to forget.”
“You’re using the same excuses Dad did.”
“Leaving someone a sampler of imported French beauty products isn’t the same as tricking some poor girl into moving to a compound with no running water and spotty electricity in the middle of the desert and birthing eight kids.
And you can’t use preaching as a stand-in for a real brotherly relationship.
” I pull out my wallet and fan my collection of credit cards. “Let’s go bond over spending money.”
My older half brother slaps the cards out of my hands, sending them scattering onto the hardwood floor. “Don’t think you can bribe me.”
“Yeah, you’re too dedicated to your job for that.”
His gray eyes, like mine, narrow. I can’t pull anything past Crawford.
He grabs my jaw, twisting my head this way and that. “You’re slipping. You’re paranoid and bored and need, dare I say, a woman in your life.” He throws me back onto the couch.
“Winnie has a friend. I’ll suffer through a double date with you.
Honestly, that would work in your favor.
” I crane my head back to shoot him a grin.
“Someone has to keep the conversation light and flowing. Contrary to popular belief, girls only like brooding guys in their fan fiction and romance novels.”
“Salinger says you’re escalating.”
I jump up. “I cleaned her bathroom. It’s not like I’m licking her underwear.”
“You? Clean something? By yourself?”
“I am a good person. I built an entire museum and stocked it—”
“With art you impulse bought.”
“And I set up an endowed fund to pay all my workers a livable wage. My stadiums provide good jobs. I’m the darling of Seattle. My team won the Super Bowl last year.”
“Yeah, because your quarterback was fucking with the football.” Crawford makes a disgusted noise.
“Hey, it’s not my fault Boston just didn’t have it in them.”
“Stay away from her.”
“Calm down.” I turn away from him. “She doesn’t want anything to do with me anyway.”
“Good,” he warns. “Because if she gets involved with you, you’re going to ruin her life.”