Chapter Eight. Holden
EIGHT
Holden
She was nowhere a few days ago and now she’s every-fucking-where I look.
On my computer screen in proof after proof of the new marketing images. That goddamn red bikini and that straw resting between her pouty lips. The ones I refuse to use but that sell the product so damn well, even I want to drink it.
In the office. The distinct click of her heels as she strides up and down the hall with a purpose that I swear says fuck you, and for the life of me I can’t figure out the why behind it.
In the clipped tone of every single email response I’ve gotten from her.
In the radio silence of unanswered texts I’ve sent her.
In that fucking annoying laugh Chadwick has that seems to be louder and more grating every time I hear it.
In that rock on her finger that has me gritting my teeth every damn time I see it flash across the room.
I’ve missed something when I never miss anything.
I pinch the bridge of my nose and run everything over in my head again. I spent hours digging into Chad again last night. Firewall after firewall. Social media DMs. His iCloud account. Fucking everything.
And as much as my ego is fucking bruised at the admission, there has to be something he has to offer her that I can’t.
What did I fucking miss?
What does marrying him net her that I can’t see?
My jaw hurts from clenching and my eyes burn from the late-night-into-early-morning scrolling.
Of course Rowan would choose what Chad has to offer over what I do. She’s a Rothschild, after all. A product of this fucked-up town and backward society. Rich folk stay together. Westmore Rothschilds and Williamses do, especially.
Nothing’s changed.
Fucking shame on me for thinking she was different.
“Holden?” Bob, my investigator, prompts through the connection when I’ve gone silent for longer than normal.
“Make it fucking hurt,” I grit out.
“O-kay.” He stretches the word out with curiosity edging his tone. “Is there a reason for your change of heart?”
“I wasn’t aware I needed to have one.”
He clears his throat. The man’s worked for me long enough to know my tone means don’t fucking question me.
“So, make it hurt in what respect?” he redirects as he rightly fucking should. “You’ve created a lot of options.”
“I have, haven’t I?” The thought makes me smile and feel a little better. There’s no place that Rhett or Chadwick can run and hide to avoid my wrath.
I’ve made goddamn sure of it.
The rotten land deal named WillowBend. The exposure of their trust embezzlements. A cold case on a hit-and-run. A large payment to ensure a winning run for city council. Them finding out that Rowan now has a seat on their board.
So many fucking ways.
“WillowBend, I assume?” Bob asks.
“Yes. The owners are teetering on defaulting on their loan. They’re more than late on their payments.”
“Even with the ten percent they received closing the deal?”
I glance down the hallway through the wall of windows on my office toward Rhett’s.
My door is closed. I can speak freely. “That ten percent doesn’t stretch far when you have to account for taxes, lawyers, accountants, the disbursement to the other shareholders.
” I smirk and then scowl. “Then there’s the upcoming wedding.
No doubt both sets of parents will request to pull funds from their family trusts—”
“Which now have virtually nonexistent balances.”
“Correct. I mean, if you’re throwing the biggest wedding Westmore’s ever seen, then no doubt you only want the best of everything.” I choke on the words and hate the acrid taste they leave on my tongue.
“It’s a tough way to live, robbing Peter to pay Paul and then floating the funds again so Peter thinks he’s still rich.”
“Shell game,” I murmur. Been there, done that.
It was the only way I could survive at times.
But my game was to deceive banks into giving me more loans, not to trick my parents so they don’t know I siphoned all the funds from their accounts.
“Spread the wealth around. Put enough in the trust to pay for the wedding so no one questions anything. Give enough of a payment on the loan to satisfy the lender that more is coming.”
“The lender will allow that?”
“When your last name is Rothschild or Williams, you get endless favors.”
He chuckles. “Clearly they don’t truly know the man with the last name Knight.”
“Clearly.” I stretch my fingers and for the first time in days feel slightly more in control of things. “We’ll need to watch TinSpirits’ accounts as well. No doubt they’ll try something—a big payment to a nonexistent supplier or something in case they get in trouble.”
“I’m assuming you have that taken care of on your end?” Bob asks.
“I have. Yes.” I put triggers in TinSpirits’ operating system long before we inked a letter of intent. And those safeguards have allowed me to follow a trail of payments. Knowledge is power and they have no clue how much I have on them.
“Okay, so … what do you need from me?”
“Give them hope that WillowBend is sold. We’ll string those assholes along. Get right up to the signing day and then I’ll yank it the fuck away from them with a public decree of how they’re falsifying reports. Get the real estate board to investigate them for fraud.”
“Perfect. The fuckers are slimy.”
Chadwick walks out of his office and glances down the hall toward mine. I meet his eyes but don’t react outwardly otherwise. My hands fist and shoulders tense. What is it you’re giving her that I can’t?
“They sure are,” I murmur. “Like I said, I want it to hurt.”
Then Chadwick walks to the door of Rowan’s office, leans his hip against the doorframe, and laughs that fucking laugh again presumably at something she says.
“Holden?”
Chadwick looks back over his shoulder and smirks my way.
Oh, how I want it to fucking hurt.
“Yeah. Sorry. Where were we?” I swivel in my chair so my back is to the show in the hall. “They’re going to panic, Bob. What’s the last thing you want to happen when you’re running for public office?”
“A scandal. An exposé. Running out of money.”
“Exactly. And right now all three are threatening Rhett. So they’ll fight. They’ll call in favors. They’ll hold on. And then the house of cards will crumble.”
“You really think Chadwick will remain loyal and at Rhett’s side?”
I think of the damn lighter left in the gutter. Clank. Click. Clank. The best friend, Rhett, who’s kept a secret for Chadwick for all these years.
“Each knows where the other has buried the bodies. There’s no way they’d betray each other now.”
“Huh. Stupid move if you ask me.”
“Agreed, but mutual blackmail is a powerful thing.”
“True.” He pauses and I know he’s thinking what I’m thinking. Same goes for us.
I let the silence stretch and my unspoken threat scream across it. Don’t get any fucking ideas.
“When will you know the time is right?” Bob asks.
It’s a question I’ve asked myself more times than I care to count. A question I might have waffled some on with Rowan threaded through the day-to-day of my life. Not anymore.
I’ve seen the error of my ways.
“When? When it will ruin them completely.” When the company is pieced apart and sold out from under them.
When all the money is gone and their parents realize they’ve fucked them, their financial security, and their social status right out from under them.
When they’re the fucking laughingstocks in this town with nothing left to offer anybody.
When they act out of desperation like I no doubt am certain they will.
“I know it seems I’m only after Rothschild,” I say and glance over my shoulder to where Chadwick still stands, “but this is a zero-sum game for both.”
“And one is the conduit for the other.”
“Correct. It might be Rhett front and center, but make no mistake, Bob, Chadwick is sighted as well.”
“I never doubted it. So I’ll contact their estate agent. Tell them the deal might be back on the table.”
“Yes.”
“And while Rhett’s campaign is as low-key as can be—”
“Because he’s already bought himself the seat,” I say.
“It doesn’t hurt to have a friend I know over at the Federal Election Commission threaten an audit of his campaign finances. Those pesky laws can be so tricky to understand and follow.”
“Might trigger a panic.” Perfect.
“Just might.” Bob laughs. “And with Chadwick being the campaign finance manager and all, it might just add a bit of a damper on that wedding being planned.”
“Did I ever tell you how much I like you, Bob?”
“No, but my paycheck shows you do.”
“At least we speak the same love language.”
“We do in fact.”
“Oh, hey.” I glance down to my notepad with the word Monarch scribbled on it and circled over and over. “Does the word Monarch mean anything to you?”
“No. Why?”
“Monarch,” Chad spits out.
“Monarch?” I ask. The word and the way he said it gives me pause.
“The reason behind it all.” He glances over his shoulder to where Rhett should be coming any second.
“Behind what all?”
“Rhett. His carte blanche.”
“I’m not sure.” I glance again at the word. The one Chad offered up when we were in the strip club that night like a junkie desperate for a hit just to gain some clout with me. “But it means something or Chad wouldn’t have said it to me.”
“Context?”
“He just said that’s why Rhett has carte blanche, but fuck if I can figure out what it means.”
“An anonymous LLC or something?”
“Who the hell knows, but it’s something.”
“Especially if he was offering it to you as a means to win favor.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
“Huh. Interesting. Well, I’ll keep all the irons in the fire so everything stays hot and ready to ignite when you say so.”
“Perfect.” In the meantime, I’ll continue to have fun with them in my own ways.
“Have a good rest of your day, Mr. Knight.”
“You too, Bob. You too.”
I drop my cell onto the desk and swivel back to stare down the hallway. TinSpirits managers move about. But I focus on one doorway. On one office.
And on the woman I can’t see but whose kiss I can still fucking taste.
“Audrey,” I call out through the intercom.
Within seconds, my door swings open and a pair of steely eyes questions me. “Yes?”
“Has the paperwork been finished yet?”
“On the transfer of—?”
“Yes, on that.”
“It should be here by week’s end.”
“They do know I’m paying them for their expediency, right?”
“I believe you may have said that a time or two,” she says sarcastically, which earns her a dubious look. “You wouldn’t have done anything to piss off our two favorite executives, would you?”
“Why?”
“Because they went from smiling and laughing in the hallway to silently whispering agitatedly behind closed doors.”
A slow smile crawls over my lips. “My fingers might have slipped and hit some erroneous keys a bit ago. I’m sure whatever I accidentally hit will right itself in a bit. The panic will subside, no doubt.”
What do you do to two people desperate for money? Take their accounts offline? Create a glitch that zeroes out their accounts? Maybe both. No doubt Rhett and Chadwick are holed up in one of their offices freaking the fuck out.
Things will correct themselves shortly.
In the meantime, I rather enjoy knowing the chaos I’ve sown.
“Tell Miss Rothschild I need to see her.”
Audrey lifts her eyebrows but doesn’t ask the questions I can see in her eyes. “Sure. Shall I tell her what it’s in regards to?”
Why she’s changing the dress.
Why she’s with Chad.
Because I need to see her.
“The new ad campaign.”