Chapter 3
The last thing I want to do is have a meal with my father and his protégé, Caleb. Yeah, yeah, he’s my brother. Blood is thicker than water. All that shit. And I might have believed in that cliche before my brother stabbed me in the back. Not now, though. He chose sides. He chose our father.
He chose wrong.
Naturally, Caleb’s sitting at the table alone as I walk into the posh lakeside restaurant. I’m sure our dad is running late. He’s never on time, especially for his family. We come last.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Ander—”
I lift my hand before Rob, the ma?tre d, can finish my last name. It always makes me feel like that guy in the Matrix movies when he greets me that way.
“I see my brother. Thanks.” I pat Rob’s shoulder twice as I pass the hostess stand, and his shoulders drop the invisible bags of cement that were likely resting on them.
That’s how people are around my father—knotted, messy, stressed-out wrecks.
Even when he’s not directly their boss. My dad’s been coming to Patrick’s by Lakeside for years, and for Rob, he may as well be on the Anderson payroll.
The amount of shady shit I bet that guy has overheard and had to bury deep down and try to forget must be epic.
One of these days, I’m going to offer him a job far away from this place and pay for his therapy.
Caleb swivels his chair and leans back as I approach, stretching his legs out to force me to walk around them on my way to my seat.
He’s wearing gray dress slacks and a fitted white button-down, the standard summer corporate attire for my dad’s company.
I threw this denim button-down over my T-shirt and swapped my jeans for a clean pair of Dickie’s out of respect for Rob.
He shouldn’t have to track down a coat for me to fit in with the clientele in this joint.
“Rowan.” Caleb nods, still chewing the roll he stuffed down his face as I walked in.
“Hey, baby brother. Happy graduation, blah blah blah.” I snag a roll from the silver bowl in the center of the table and slink down to match his disrespectful posture.
I don’t really love seafood, so I may as well fill up on carbs while I can.
And Caleb doesn’t like it when I call him baby, so I figure we both may as well not like something about this lunch date.
“Hey, thanks for parking cars for my party. Real classy of you.” He snaps off another bite from a roll and smirks at me as he chews.
“Yeah, well . . . you know me. I never turn down an opportunity to case a lot full of high-end cars.” I mimic him with my own bite, and we spend the next several seconds in a death stare while chewing.
It’s been more than a year since I called on my brother to be a character witness after a con man dropped off a stolen Bentley at our shop, as if it were his own.
I was too eager to make our shop succeed, too na?ve, and I leapt at the chance to work on something rare.
When the guy dipped from the country, though, we were left holding the bags, or wheels in this case.
An unsealed juvenile arson record meant I took the hit.
I wouldn’t let it touch Miguel, so I pleaded my way out of things and wore an ankle bracelet until last week, since my brother refused to put his name on the line.
My dad paid for the shitty lawyer, so now, I’m working off that debt by giving him my time, something I swore I wouldn’t let him have when I walked out of the house six years ago.
Caleb breaks our standoff first with a laugh, dropping the half-eaten roll on the small plate in front of him, then leaning into the table, resting his elbows on either side while he rubs his palms together.
“You’re the one running a chop shop, Rowan. Don’t act so high and mighty.” His mouth falls into a straight, emotionless line while I fight to keep my pulse in check. I’d like to deck him across this table, but that won’t accomplish anything.
“Believe me, Caleb. I don’t set foot near you high and mighty folks if I can help it,” I say, not even bothering to correct his smear. My business is legit. Always has been. I know it. Miguel knows it. And the real collectors and gearheads who come to us know it. That’s all that matters.
I’m not sure what I prefer, sitting here alone with my brother or making it a three-top with our dad.
The choice is out of my hands, though, as my dad walks into the restaurant, his phone pressed against his right ear while he nods at us and points with his right finger to a table he would apparently prefer.
Caleb scrambles on command. I sigh as I pick up the bowl of bread and move three tables to our left, closer to the water and farther away from the staff. I wonder what kinds of things dear old dad doesn’t want others to hear.
“Listen, Jack. I’ve gotta go. I just got to my appointment, but this all sounds great. Let’s talk it through over drinks tonight.” My dad ends the call after that, and I hope Jack, whoever that was, is used to his typical abruptness.
“Sorry for making you wait. Did you guys order?” My dad flips open one of the menus Caleb carried over from our first table, as if he needs to study it. I’m sure he has it memorized, and besides, the chef will make him anything he wants.
“We waited for you,” Caleb says, sitting up straight and dropping his cloth napkin in his lap to protect his stupid fucking slacks.
“We waited for you,” I mutter in a hushed, mocking tone as I snag a menu to scan.
“Fuck off,” Caleb fires back, his voice low but not exactly quiet.
“Knock it off,” our father grunts without looking up from his menu.
“Sorry,” Caleb is quick to apologize. I roll my eyes, owning the childish way I baited him just now. It’s so easy to get under his skin. It was playful when we were kids, but now I do it purely out of spite.
I don’t know why Caleb tries so hard to impress our dad, honestly.
I’m clearly the outcast in the family. I’m the black sheep.
Everyone knows it. All he needs to do is breathe and stay out of jail, and he’ll forever remain the golden child.
And if it’s an inheritance thing, I think I’ve made it abundantly clear that I don’t want a single penny of my father’s money.
That’s why Miguel and I took out a business loan on our own.
I’d rather climb out of debt for a few years than feel obligated to that man, or worse, make him feel entitled to our shop.
He already lives to take jabs at me and what I do.
When our server comes, my father orders three lobster tail salads, so I close my menu and toss it on top of Caleb’s.
My brother never even bothered to open his.
I stare at his face until his eyes shift to meet mine for a beat, and I blink slowly and shake my head.
Caleb quickly glances the other way, though.
There was a time when my brother was just as annoyed by my father’s controlling ways as I am, but I guess the promise of power and money was too alluring for him.
Hell, the kid gave up college hoops to make our dad happy.
We both wanted to play, but I lost my right the second I confessed to dropping a match in the Malibu beach house.
Caleb traded a possible run in March Madness for creased dress pants and a pathway to securities management exams. I’m not sure when he cashed in his dreams for my father’s, but I’d guess it happened around the time he told the detectives working my case that he couldn’t vouch for me on account of my criminal past. That was enough to get a judge to approve unsealing my arson conviction.
Feeling antsy, I flatten my palms on the linen-covered table and lean in.
“So, what’s the occasion?” I have a million other places to be. Well, places I’d rather be.
“We can talk business after we eat. I want to hear about my boys.” My father must have a doozy for us. He’s laying it on thick.
He stands to take his jacket off to lay it over the back of the chair, but Rob flies in before my dad’s pulled his second arm free. My father pulls a thick envelope from the inside pocket and sets it on the table, along with a gold pen, before Rob rushes his coat away to the closet.
“That guy deserves a raise,” he chuckles.
I smile faintly, wishing he would actually do something to make that happen. He won’t, though, because helping Rob in no way serves him.
“Caleb, did you like your party? Your guests seemed to have a good time. I think the last one finally crawled out of the house an hour ago, according to the security cameras.”
My brother breathes out a short laugh and nods. My attention, however, is divided between their conversation and the envelope that is clearly the reason why we’ve been summoned.
“It was perfect.” Caleb’s response is confident and clipped.
My dad’s gaze lingers on my brother for a beat, though, and the longer it lasts, the more my brother begins to squirm in his seat.
Caleb and I have both endured that look enough times to know that it’s masking something.
Caleb’s feet shift under the table, and he straightens his spine in preparation.
“Good. I hope Saylor enjoyed herself, too. I know it must have been awkward for her. You certainly didn’t help make her comfortable.”
And there it is. It’s not that my dad has some special regard for Saylor.
It’s more the fact that he has a complicated relationship with her mom, Allison.
Nobody holds more dirty secrets about my dad close to their chest than her.
He wouldn’t want her to be unhappy, and making her daughter unhappy is a bit of a threat to the peace he’s miraculously been able to keep with her.
But these are nuances my brother hasn’t been old enough to notice.
When he was busy with club basketball practices and running for homecoming king, I was growing up fast and taking notes.