Chapter Two
Bella
Boston, Massachusetts
If Drew Burke had been anyone else, I would have met him in a conference room. A neutral one. Glass walls. A receptionist. Coffee that tasted like regret and money. The kind of setting where people who believed themselves powerful could pretend they were in control.
But Drew Burke was not someone I could be seen speaking to in public. Any association with him would only make the situation worse.
Drew was also a man who walked into a room and made you aware of what you didn’t have. Control. Leverage. Certainty.
I chose a space he normally wouldn’t have access to as a reminder that my family had built a financial empire long before his ever stepped into a boardroom. I needed him unsettled. Disoriented. Off balance.
Not because I wanted to win. He needed to see me as an equal. Power and influence were the only things a man like him respected.
And I needed him on my side.
The Beacon wasn’t a place you mentioned casually in conversation. It wasn’t a club. It was an instrument. A mechanism. It was hundreds of years of quiet enforcement wrapped in mahogany and silence. A warning disguised as tradition.
And today, it was my last viable option.
I kept my posture straight, my hands still, my expression empty. I had mastered composure the way other women became skilled with makeup. Appearances not only mattered more than reality, they shaped it.
A member of my security team had found the video less than twelve hours after it posted. Not because it had been trending. Not because someone had tagged it. Because we had systems that watched for the right names, the right faces, the right locations.
Even small mistakes could have rippling consequences.
The video had been taken down quickly. How? I didn’t ask. I gave the order to have the issue resolved and it had been. By way of a bribe? A threat? It didn’t matter.
And it also didn’t solve the situation. Once something existed online, it existed forever. That threat, though, could be mitigated.
Easily, if it hadn’t reached the wrong eyes. I was reasonably certain it hadn’t, because there’d been no change in my father’s behavior, and he normally went quiet before he made a poor decision.
There were too many unknowns for me to trust that this wasn’t a building crisis. I didn’t have all the information, which meant I wasn’t ahead of the problem. I was chasing it.
Of course I’d asked Brady about the incident, but he’d remained uncharacteristically unhelpful.
Which left the smugly arrogant man before me as my only option. Choose my words carefully? Who the hell did he think he was talking to?
I was tempted to say as much to him. But I didn’t. I might lack a lot of qualities, but self-restraint was not one of them.
I looked Drew over, because although I hated to admit it, he wasn’t ugly. Tall. Broad shoulders. Expensive, but understated taste in suits. Strong angular jaw. Dark, piercing eyes. It was a shame that such good looks had been wasted on a Burke.
His eyes flicked across the room once, quick and assessing, then locked on me as he waited for my response to his warning.
He didn’t sit as I’d motioned him to.
He didn’t pretend to be polite.
As entertaining as all of this has been, cut to the chase, Holliston. I’d love to have given him an entertaining kick to the balls, but that would have both been below me . . . and risked being something I enjoyed too much.
“I intend to,” I said, because I did. Words were like ammunition, and I couldn’t afford to waste a single one.
His eyes narrowed slightly, as if he had expected me to react differently.
I gave him nothing.
To find out what he knew, there was only one way to speak to a man like him: slowly, and as if he mattered. “I could have asked you to come to New York, but I came to you, instead.”
One of his eyebrows rose in challenge, as if to say the idea of him coming to me was not an option that had ever been on the table.
I inhaled and held my calm. “A video surfaced yesterday,” I said.
His expression didn’t change. Not outwardly. But something in his eyes shifted, a fraction of darkness sharpening.
“Of your sister with my brother.”
That got him. His body stiffened, like every muscle in him had pulled tight at once.
The temperature in the room dropped.
He took one step forward.
“Not in a compromising position.” I didn’t give him time to build the wrong story.
“And not with Evan,” I said, because I saw exactly where his mind would go.
Despite spending most of his time outside of the United States, Evan’s escapades were wild enough to taint his reputation at home.
The playboy. Gabe Holliston’s wild child.
The one people joked had been forced to go international simply because he’d dated everyone stateside.
Drew’s gaze snapped to mine, hard.
“Brady,” I added. “My youngest brother.”
The name landed like a match. “I know who Brady is. Why were they together?” he demanded.
I blinked once. “I don’t know.” The words were simple. Honest. They also might have been the worst possible thing I could have said.
His shoulders went rigid.
“You don’t know,” he repeated, as if tasting the phrase, deciding whether it was incompetence or insult.
“Brady won’t tell me,” I said calmly.
His eyes flared. “What was on the video?” he snapped.
I didn’t hesitate, because hesitation could be interpreted as spin. “It was taken on his college campus. Your sister had her arms around him. They were leaving a party together.”
His nostrils flared. He looked like he was one sharp breath away from violence. “Was she drunk?”
“No idea.”
“Was he touching her?”
“Her arms were around him,” I said. “Not the reverse.”
His stare went so cold it was almost expressionless. A man like Drew didn’t need to raise his voice to be threatening. He didn’t need theatrics. He had conviction. He had force. He had the kind of anger that didn’t burn quickly. It burned clean. It burned down foundations.
“What do you know?” he asked.
My answer had to be perfect. “That the video was shared in a way someone hoped would make them look bad.”
“What does that mean?”
I ran my hand down my skirt and stood. “It means I handled that situation, but although the video didn’t go viral, it existed long enough to be captured and shared. I can’t guarantee it’s gone.”
“You said it was taken down.”
“Yes, but that’s not the same thing as gone. And I wasn’t aware they knew each other outside of Firebrook Valley. Were you?”
He took another step forward, and for the first time, I felt the pressure of him in the room like a physical weight. “If this is some kind of Holliston stunt,” he said quietly, “if you’re trying to use my sister to get at my father, you’re going to regret it.”
I didn’t flinch. Not because my heart wasn’t thudding wildly in my chest, but because how I felt didn’t matter as much as the outcome of this conversation. “I don’t do stunts, and if I wanted something unfavorable to happen to your father, I’d handle it personally. I’d never involve Brady.”
His eyes narrowed again. The corner of his mouth lifted but not with amusement. Calculation. “Then why the hell am I here?”
Because I don’t have all the information, and I need you to give it to me. I didn’t say that.
Instead, I said the only truth that mattered. “Because I need your help finding out what was going on in that video and if they’re spending time together. We both know that any association between your sister and my brother is a bad idea.”
His expression shifted, fast and sharp.
And I saw it.
He still thought I was the enemy.
He had no idea that by protecting Brady, I was also protecting Nora. The Beacon? The role of being the peacekeeper? Both were an inheritance I wouldn’t have chosen.