Chapter 2
Chapter Two
FORD
NOW
“Thanks, man. See ya.”
I answered with a nod as the tourist pulled the three-pint glasses into a triangle, bracing his fingers around them to carry his beers to the table.
My sister Avery worked the bar in her taproom with a wide, welcoming smile.
Not me. Don’t get me wrong—I liked working Avery’s bar.
I liked being out of Heartstone Manor. Finally free, or as free as it seemed I was going to get.
Now that Cole Haywood, my former lawyer and the man who’d set me up to take the fall for my father’s murder, was safely in jail, I could pick up the reins of my life. The problem was that life was gone.
My brother Griffen had my former job running Sawyer Enterprises, and for so many reasons, there wasn’t a place there for me anymore.
I had to do something with my life. I couldn’t spend the next few decades lurking in the family home, haunting the library, reading biography after biography of people who’d managed to do better than betray everyone who loved them in the service of ambition and ego.
I was halfway through my life, if I was lucky, and all I’d managed to do was drive away most of my family, kiss my father’s ass, and make money—a huge chunk of which had gone to paying the aforementioned attorney who’d double-crossed me.
Not much of a legacy. I’d been given everything, and I’d squandered it.
So here I was, tending bar for my sister.
I caught the pitying looks of the locals when they came in: the great Ford Sawyer reduced to pulling pints and making change.
Oh, how I’d come down in the world. I wouldn’t lie—there were times when it grated.
I was Ford Sawyer, goddammit, not an object of pity.
Except that I was.
I grabbed a damp rag and wiped the top of the bar.
Maybe every once in a while I felt sorry for myself, but it never lasted long.
I always ended up remembering two things.
First, I deserved all of this. I wasn’t the king of the castle anymore.
I never would be, because it wasn’t my castle, and I deserved far worse than the year I’d spent in prison.
And second, most of the time, I liked being exactly where I was.
Tending bar in my sister’s brewery, watching my brother set up the kitchen so they could combine forces, serving Finn’s amazing food with Avery’s fantastic beer.
As much as a part of me yearned for the throne again, the rest of me just wanted this.
The job was straightforward: serve people beer.
Avery might have liked it if I made polite chit-chat, but we both accepted that wasn’t going to happen.
She seemed to like having me around. I liked helping out.
The employee I’d replaced had stabbed Avery in the back, stealing from her and sleeping with her ex—all sorts of crap my sister didn’t deserve.
Filling in took a weight off her shoulders.
God knew I needed to help. I’d caused too much harm in the years before my father died.
It had started way back when I was fresh out of college and jealous of my older brother’s position in the family, his gorgeous fiancée, our father’s approval, and his knack for business.
I’d masterminded Griffen’s exile and taken everything that had been his.
I’d thought the triumph would feel so good that it would erase the pain of losing my brother.
I’d been wrong. By the time I figured it out, it was too late. I had the power. I had the position. I had the woman, the sports car, the bank account bursting at the seams. And in the end, I still wasn’t much more than my father’s lackey.
If I’d stayed at Griffen’s side, if we’d worked together…could we have shifted things? Taken the company in a different direction? Shared the glory? I’d never know.
“Hey, Ford.” A local whose name I couldn’t remember bellied up to the bar. “A stout and an IPA,” he said, his eyes bright with interest. “Helping out Avery?”
“For now,” I said with a nod and turned my back to fill his order.
I recognized the gleam in his eye. While Avery’s beer was more than enough to draw in locals and tourists alike, we all knew my presence behind the bar was its own attraction, at least until the novelty wore off.
The great Ford Sawyer tending bar in the smallest brewery in town.
More than a few people had come in just for the fun of having Ford Sawyer serve their beer.
I hadn’t thought I had much of an ego left to poke after a year in state prison, but it turned out I had just enough for it to sting.
Still, it wasn’t enough to drive me away from my new job. Not yet.
I slid the pints across the bar, ran his card, and handed him the receipt without a word.
I served beer, and I was polite, but friendly and chatty weren’t on the menu.
If they wanted that, they’d have to come in when Dave or Avery were working.
The local left, shoulders rounding in disappointment that he hadn’t gotten more out of me than his beer.
Eventually, everyone would get used to the new normal. I could wait them out.
The door pushed open, and West Garfield, our police chief, walked in.
He met my eyes, lifting his chin in greeting.
I lifted mine back. West and I weren’t buddy-buddy.
He was Griffen’s closest friend and had never forgiven me for the way things went down back in the day.
Fair enough, especially when I hadn’t forgiven myself.
But he was head over heels in love with Avery, and he was a good man.
I couldn’t have picked a better one for my sister.
He crossed the taproom, headed for the door that led to the brewery. “Avery in her office?”
“She’s back there somewhere,” I said, and with a grin, he disappeared.
I didn’t have friends like West. When we were kids, everyone loved Griffen just a little more than me.
Or a lot more, depending. I’d always wondered if the other kids had sensed the seed of darkness in my heart.
The envy that led me to betray my own brother.
After Griffen was gone, I’d had a boatload of acquaintances and a million people who were happy to pretend to be my friend in the hopes of a favor—a job, a referral, a tip, anything that could benefit them.
And like my father, I’d used them, getting as much as I could before doling out stingy bits of the Sawyer influence. I’d convinced myself it was enough.
Now, surrounded by family, who these days were as much friends as relations, in a house brimming with love and laughter, I finally understood how deeply I’d erred. I had money in the bank, I lived in a castle, and yet I was one of the poorest people I knew.
I rolled my shoulders to loosen the tension and went back to cleaning the bar. This self-pity bullshit was at the top of my list of post-prison fears. I was not going to turn into some useless whiner, sitting alone in the dark, bemoaning everything I’d lost. I needed to find a purpose.
I couldn’t forget what Cole had said to Avery not long before West arrested him. I’m not fucking done with Ford, but he’ll know exactly where we stand before the end.
Cole Haywood was in prison. He’d confessed to a lot, including setting me up to go down for my father’s murder.
Officially, my name was cleared. But there was a big fucking difference between clearing my name legally and people believing I was innocent.
Most of the locals thought I’d gotten off because I was a Sawyer.
Many still thought I’d murdered my father in cold blood.
It was nice to know that my family never thought I did it. Avery had looked me in the eye and said, “I could believe you’d kill Dad. But not like that. You’re way too smart.”
She was right.
If I’d been planning to kill Prentice, I sure as hell wouldn’t have walked into his office after a big argument the whole household had heard, shot him in the middle of the forehead, then tromped around in the dirt outside his office windows, leaving my shoe prints everywhere.
I definitely wouldn’t have gone home afterward and put both the shoes and the gun in my own closet.
If I’d been that stupid, I would have deserved to get caught.
Instead, I’d argued with my father. Artwork had been disappearing from Heartstone Manor.
Most of it didn’t matter, but some pieces were family heirlooms. In my mind, they didn’t belong to Prentice any more than they belonged to me or Griffen.
They belonged to the family as a whole, had been passed down through generations, and were meant to continue to be passed to children and grandchildren, not secreted away in the night and sold off.
Prentice had refused to tell me what he was doing—where the money was going, where the art was—and, furious, I’d lost my temper.
Generally, I could hold it together, but my father’s knowing smirk always got under my skin.
I’d stormed out, pounding my foot into the gas pedal and roaring down the country road that led to town.
Unfortunately, I’d passed a number of witnesses.
Whoever had killed Prentice had come in right after, unseen by anyone except my now-dead father.
And my angry drive had placed me just close enough to the time of death to make it look like I did it.
If I’d killed my father, I would have been a lot more subtle. Slow poisoning, maybe, or a hunting accident. I wouldn’t say the thought had never crossed my mind. Prentice Sawyer could be an evil bastard, and until his final moments, he’d evaded any kind of accountability.
I’d thought so often, if only he were out of the way, but I’d been imagining a heart attack or a car accident, some intervention of fate that could save me from my father.
Fate had indeed intervened, in the form of a killer’s bullet. And until we found out who the killer was, I’d always be presumed guilty.