Chapter 17 - Simon
Back in the city, I can only think about one thing.
The story that Blair told me about what her stepbrother did to her is haunting me like a bad dream.
That asshole almost destroyed her life. He forced her out of her hometown and ruined her reputation there.
Not to mention that because of him, the guys in that town were constantly harassing her. He put her in danger.
Nothing in me is willing to just brush this off as okay.
It’s not fucking okay.
“Hey, yeah, I need you to find out some information for me,” I say quietly into the phone pressed against my ear as I type on my laptop.
“What is it?” The voice on the other end of the line is only half away. Groggy and rough.
It’s past three in the morning. I thought I might be able to track down her stepbrother’s name on social media, but it looks like she blocked all connections to him.
“Blair Reynolds. Her mother remarried, and that man has a son. I need the son’s name. Her stepbrother. I want to know who he is, where he is, what he’s doing… everything you can give me.”
“Is he in the life?”
“No, a civilian. This is confidential. Keep the report away from my brothers. This is a personal matter.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Is it urgent? Can it wait till morning?”
I glance at my watch. I could let the man sleep. It’s not as though the asshole stepbrother is going anywhere. No. Track him down. Find him now. he doesn’t deserve another moment of peace in his life.
“It’s urgent,” I reply.
On the other end of the line, I hear my private investigator sigh and the shuffling sounds of him climbing out of bed. “I’ll start on it right away.”
“Thanks. Call me as soon as you have his name.”
After the phone call, I should feel satisfied that things are being handled, but my mind is still a mess of anger and determination.
Blair deserves vengeance for what the man did to her.
How could she let it go? Has she? I don’t think so.
I think it’s eaten away at parts of her, and she isn’t even aware of the damage it’s done in her life.
I will find him. I will hunt him down.
And I will make him pay.
Sighing, I push away from my laptop to try and get a couple of hours’ sleep before the day starts.
The house is silent as I make my way to bed, thinking that once the PI has found her stepbrother’s name, I will ask him to find the names of his close friends, the ones that’s hounded her.
If I had my way, I’d have him hunt down the name of every man in that city who tried to take advantage of her, but it’s unrealistic.
but him and his friends… they are on my list now.
***
My alarm goes off, and I hardly register it. My dream warps, and the sound filters through again and again until, finally, it drags me from sleep enough to wake me.
I reach over and grab my phone, silencing the alarm and instantly checking for a reply from the PI.
Sitting up in bed, I read his message.
Anthony Milton. The rest of the report will follow shortly.
Her stepbrother!
The message was sent about thirty minutes ago.
I type a quick reply.
ETA on report?
Fifteen minutes. Finishing it up now.
My heart constricts with excitement. I’ve got him. Now I can start planning how I want to destroy his life.
In the fifteen minutes it takes for him to send the rest of the report, I make a cup of coffee and grab a five-minute shower. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I register the fact that I have not had enough sleep, but it hardly matters. I have a name. I am about to get the report.
Excitement stirs the darkness in me. People should always get what they deserve, and I am happy to be the one who makes sure Anthony Milton pays for what he did to Blair.
The report isn’t long. Not as long as the reports I pull on people who are a part of the underworld.
Antony is a civilian. His life is pretty straightforward except for the part where he’s still a selfish fucker who has zero issue with messing people around.
There are several police reports against him that seem to have disappeared at random.
That usually means money exchanged hands.
I know how that story goes. Along with that, there are three restraining orders and one assault charge that went nowhere.
It looks like Anthony never stopped harassing women and has someone in the police who is willing to accept payment to make the issues go away.
He lives and works in the Florida Keys and runs a successful business, which, no surprise here, is a strip club.
There are a number of photographs in the file showing a guy standing in front of expensive cars, with half-dressed women draped all over him. There is a photo of him with a pretty girl, then another photo of that same girl in a police report with bruises on her face.
The more I look, the angrier I get, and slowly a plan begins to form in my mind.
He thinks he has an empire. One strip club. A handful of nice cars and women that you have to pay to want to be with you. It’s not an empire. And he isn’t as untouchable as he believes.
I spend a few hours reading the report, then rereading it, again and again, and doing more research of my own. It’s past one in the afternoon when Blair sticks her head in the office door. “Simon? Are you ever going to come out of here?”
“Mm?” I mutter without looking up.
“I didn’t want to disturb you this morning. You looked so deep in focus when I peeked in, but you literally haven’t come out of here all day,” she giggles.
I look up at her, snapping out of my focus.
“Blair, hi,” I say, smiling at her.
“Wow, you really are locked into that. What are you doing?” she asks as she walks into the office.
I quickly close my laptop and stand up to stretch. “Nothing, just work stuff. How are you?” I ask, trying to lead her away from my desk so she doesn’t see the paperwork I’ve printed out about her stepbrother and his life.
“Um, I’m okay,” she says, trying to peer at my desk with her brows knotted. “What stuff are you working on?” she asks, sounding skeptical.
“Boring stuff. I seriously need a break. Do you want to make some lunch with me? I was thinking grilled cheese and bacon toasties?”
“Sounds good,” she smiles, stealing one last glance at my desk, but I maneuver her away before she has a chance to see anything.
After lunch, I head right back up to my office.
And over the next week, I spend most of my time in there.
I have every tiny detail about her stepbrother and his business and all the underhanded shit he has done to hurt people.
I know where he lives and every detail about his bank, his offshore accounts, his coke habit, the enjoyment he gets from poker and gambling, and the names of the policemen he has paid off over the years.
And slowly but surely, I am piecing together a plan to rip his world out from under his feet one brick at a time.
It’s not going to be sudden. There would be no satisfaction in that.
It’s going to be slow and confusing for him.
He won’t understand why his financial records are suddenly not aligning.
Or why the club he owns is suddenly leaking money.
He won’t understand why his property is rezoned and all the expensive renovations he had planned are no longer approved.
He won’t understand when his cars are repossessed, and the bank records show he’s in arrears.
None of it is going to make sense. Each piece of his downfall will eat away at him, breaking his spirit while he tries to fix it, but can’t, until there is nothing left of his tiny little empire.
The illusion will be broken, and he’ll be in financial ruin, homeless, nowhere to go, and begging for help.
That’s when he’ll realize all his friends were only there for the status.
And Anthony’s demise is not the only plan I’m working on. I have side ventures running to take down the four men who were his friends back in the town Blair grew up in. And while I’m doing that, I’m also working on Jaco’s plan, redoing everything, and starting again from scratch.
***
My phone rings late on Friday afternoon, and I snatch it up, answering without looking at the screen.
“Hello,” I snap into the phone.
“Dude, where the hell have you been? I’ve messaged you a ton of times. Why aren’t you replying?” My brother sounds annoyed.
“Bardil. Hi. I’ve been busy.”
“Doing what? Because it isn’t work-related. You didn’t send this week’s delivery report. You haven’t been into the office or the warehouse. What are you so busying with that you disappear for a week solid?”
I sigh, rubbing my fingers against my temple. Shit. I don’t want to drag other people into this. And I don’t want to tell him what I’m actually doing because this is private.
“Sorry, man. Just been a crazy week,” I chuckle. “Things are good here. I have finished that report; I just haven’t sent it through yet. I’ll do it tomorrow,” I tell him.
“Ok, but it’s not about the report. I was worried about you. What’s going on with you?” he asks.
“Nothing. Seriously. Life is good. I’ve been spending time with Blair. We went up to the Bahamas for a bit to get away. Man, I love that place,” I say, hoping to redirect the whole conversation.
“Oh, that sounds amazing. I was just telling Marlen the other day that we need to get the whole family up there again.”
“We should. But after the stormy season. We got lucky while we were there and things didn’t get too out of hand, but Blair did get to witness some incredible shows of nature.”
We chat for a while, laughing, talking about nothing in particular.
By the end of the call, Bardil is reassured that I am alive and well, and there is nothing he needs to worry about, which is a relief because I didn’t need him to go to Marlen to report that I’ve gone down a rabbit hole of some sort.
After the call, I sigh and place my phone down on the desk.
I’ve been so deep in my research and planning that I haven’t realized just how tired I am. I think I’ve spent about three hours a night every night this week. If that. My body aches when I stand up and try to stretch.
“Hey, was that your brother on the phone?” Blair is standing in the doorway.
“Yeah, it was Bardil,” I smile, trying not to look as exhausted as I feel.
“You told him everything was fine?” she asks.
“Of course, why wouldn’t I?”
“Because you haven’t slept this week. You look like shit. You’re hardly eating, and you don’t even register when I stand in the doorway of your office and speak to you,” she says, scrunching her face and looking worried.
“Oh. Um. I was just busy with work stuff,” I tell her.
“If it were work stuff wouldn’t your brother know about it?” she asks, and my jaw clenches tightly.
I chuckle softly. She’s sharp. And she’s worried about me. “My brothers don’t know all of my business,” I smile, walking over to her.
She looks up at me with narrowed eyes. “Well, whatever is going on, I don’t like it. You’ve practically disappeared. You need to sleep, eat, and say hi to me every now and then. I feel like I’m living with a ghost,” she complains.
“I’m sorry. You’re right. It isn’t fair of me. I’ll grab a quick shower, and then we can go out to get a bite to eat if you like?”
“That sounds nice,” Blair nods, smiling.
I lean down, kissing her on the forehead before heading to my room to shower and change.
I don’t want to stop working on my plans, but she’s right. I can’t drift so far from her that she starts to worry about me. I need to be more careful.
“Blair?” I call out, dressed and ready to go to a restaurant with her. There is no answer, and I walk down the hallway heading for the stairs, thinking she must be down there already.
But as I’m passing my office, I see her standing behind my desk.
She looks furious as she stares down at the paperwork, the information about her stepbrother, and my notes about how I want to take him down.
When I walk in, she looks up at me, her eyes fuming.
“What is this, Simon!?” she demands.
`’it’s research,” I say cautiously.
“Research on my stepbrother. Why?” she says sternly. But it’s clear she already knows what I’m up to. She’s read my notes. It’s obvious what I’m working out.
“Blair, he doesn’t deserve to get away with what he did.
And look at the reports. He’s a terrible person.
He only got worse over time. Someone has to put a stop to it.
He has to pay for what he did to you! All of them do!
” I speak with insistence, trying to get her to understand how important this is. But Blair is shaking her head.
She drops the papers onto my desk and steps away from it, disappointment clouding her eyes.
“Blair, I have to make sure he never hurts you again,” I say, less confident than before.
“You don’t understand, Simon. I walked away from him so long ago. It’s over for me. I don’t want revenge. I don’t want to hurt anyone. I dealt with it by leaving, not by making sure he pays for what he did. It’s over. You have to stop this. This isn’t how I do things!”
Her fists are clenched at her side, and her face is red with emotion.
I take a step toward her, reaching for her, but she shakes her head and moves around me, leaving the office. “I need to clear my head,” she huffs, walking away from me.
Alone in the office, I stare at the research and plans I’ve been working on. Why can’t she see what I’m doing? It’s important. Anthony is still hurting people. He will never stop until someone shows him that he isn’t the alpha. Men like him don’t change unless they are forced to.
Sighing, I push my hand through my hair and close my eyes for a moment. I’ll give Blair a few minutes and then find her and take her to dinner.
She needs time to understand why I’m doing this. I’m sure she’ll understand.
An hour passes, and Blair hasn’t come downstairs, so I head up to her room to talk to her. But she’s not there. outside I find one of the guards and ask him if he say her leaving.
“Did you see her?” I ask, narrowing my eyes in worry.
“Yes, sir, she told the guard at the gate that she was going shopping,” he says.
Relief washes over me. Thank goodness. She must have called Talia again. I like the fact that they get on so well.
Heading back inside, I pull my phone from my pocket to message Talia and thank her for being there for Blair.
But the reply I get back makes my blood turn cold.
She’s not with me. I haven’t spoken to her today. Maybe she went with someone else?
Fuck.
Maybe she went alone!
Grabbing my car keys off the kitchen counter, I bolt out to my car. I have to find her and make sure she’s okay. Why would she go out alone? She knows it’s not safe!