Chapter 3
ENTER THE CIRCUS
Brendan
They tumbled like clowns from a car, into a room that was plainly too small for four men who all stood well over six feet tall.
Owen and Ronan were my younger brothers, and Liam might as well have been, considering we’d grown up together and Dad was basically his surrogate father (if you could call yelling and telling him he was a disappointment “fathering”).
The only one still missing was Shea, our baby sister. She was probably on her way with her mother, Violeta.
Most of the Black children, biological or not, looked alike. Ronan, Shea, and I shared the same fair complexions, same slightly crooked noses and carved cheeks, same shade of dark chestnut hair touched with red. Even Liam’s hair and height made him look like he was one of us.
We were all as dark-hearted as our name, but Owen was the only one who looked the part with black hair, black clothes, black mood.
The asshole thought he was Johnny Cash. Though he wasn’t the only child of Niall Black to have a different mother from Ronan and me (Shea was the product of Dad’s third marriage), Owen acted like he was the lone wolf.
He still wanted to be part of the pack, though. After all, he was here.
“I had a meeting,” Owen said. “You told me to fix the Ivy Ink problem with the Herald, and I was this close to getting a real name from the editor-in-chief when I got the call.”
“Getting the name of a gossip columnist isn’t more important than seeing our father in the hospital, you asshole. I know you hate her and everything, but obviously this should have taken precedence.” I turned to Liam and Ronan with a scowl. “What about you fucks?”
“We had to drive up from Newport.” Liam straightened his jacket collar. “We got here as fast as we could. Traffic was shit.”
“Newport? Why were you all the way out there?” I demanded. “There’s a board meeting tomorrow. Ronan, you know this. And Liam, I thought you were gunning for chief counsel.”
Owen rolled his eyes and mumbled something like, “Fuck the board meeting.”
Ronan and Liam snorted but quieted when I glared at them.
My hand flexed at my side, but I couldn’t level the punches I wanted. Someone had to hold their temper when the Blacks gathered, and ninety-nine percent of the time, that someone was me.
“Liam and I were just having a little wake before the big announcement,” Ronan quipped as he flopped into the chair next to Dad and started fiddling with the cards scattered over the tray. The guy never did anything but joke, and it drove me crazy.
“Why would you have a ‘wake’?” I asked. “Dad was fine this morning.”
Ronan pushed back his hair that curled more than the rest of ours. “End of an era and all that. Eldest brother is finally getting his crown when the big man finally steps down. Any death deserves a good round of debauchery.” He glanced at Dad. “Right, big guy?”
Liam was now leaning against one of the windows, arms crossed. “Jesus, Rone.”
“He’s literally alive in front of you,” I added.
Owen glowered at me. “Disappointed you weren’t invited?”
“Fuck you.” I pulled my phone out to message Liza Kelly, the CFO of Blackguard. Yet another person who should be here but wasn’t.
Still, I wasn’t about to get pulled into another pissing match with Owen about the fact that I’d been suggested as CEO over him.
Just last week, Dad had told us. He was eighty-two, and it was time for him to step down as the head of one of the biggest venture capital firms in the world.
He was supposed to make his formal nomination today.
I also wasn’t about to apologize. Out of all my brothers, I was the one who did everything right.
We’d all grown up working for Blackguard Holding in one way or another, but I was the one who had been at Dad’s side every step of the way, even running bets out of the backroom in Southie when he was still barely more than a bookie.
I finished business school top of my class.
Successfully expanded every branch of the company I’d managed.
For the last five years, I’d served as chairman of our largest division, Blackguard Investments.
The others had their roles, but no one could touch the work I’d done.
CEO was mine. I deserved it. And until a mere hour ago, I was almost certain that Dad was planning to announce the transition at tomorrow’s board meeting.
Now, who the fuck knew what would happen?
“And just when did The Black Prince get here?” Owen wondered.
Ronan turned over the back of his chair to peer at me. “As it happens, I’d like to know too.”
“I’ve been waiting for the doctor.” I wasn’t about to confess I’d only just arrived myself. My family operated like jackals. Any sign of weakness, and they tore you to shreds.
“Well, did the surgery go okay?” Liam asked. “I talked to a nurse on the way here. He said he had an emergency double bypass.”
I nodded. “He was found near the Pond. The maid said he went out to walk Aengus.”
That elicited a groan from all three of them.
“How many times have we said that damn dog is too big for him to walk alone?” Owen said.
“So it’s the schnauzer’s fault. I told you, that dog is an asshole,” Ronan agreed. “Been an asshole since the day Violeta brought him home.”
“You’re just pissed because he chewed up your shoe,” Liam said.
“It wasn’t just a shoe. It was a Jordan Dior Retro 1—and they were custom, you Philistine.”
Liam chuckled, but Owen and I both rolled our eyes. Ronan’s idiotic obsession with sneakers was one of the few things we agreed on.
Dog forgotten, Ronan leaned over the bed. “God, look at him. He’s a ghost.”
For once, there was no joke in his voice.
Just the same shock that had rippled through me when I had entered the room.
We quieted then, staring at the body—no, the person, because our father wasn’t dead yet, was he?
Watching his weak chest move up and down.
Listening to the slight sound of his breathing and the beeping coming from his machines.
Ronan, of course, was the one to break the silence. “Anyone else suddenly feel like Death just walked in? Should we say hello? Ask him to play cards? Looks like he was in the middle of a good game of solitaire.”
“Ronan, come on.” Liam shook his head, looking embarrassed.
“Well, no one here is going to fucking cry, so we might as well laugh. The bastard sure as shit wouldn’t want us bawling over his corpse.”
“Ronan, shut up,” Owen snapped.
I was too preoccupied to join in. I looked around for the woman I’d yelled at a few moments ago, but she was nowhere to be seen. She didn’t stay. I never asked her if she would. I never answered her any questions at all.
Maybe Simone really was an angel. A figment of my imagination in a moment where I needed that salvation the most.
Or maybe I was just going crazy.
I smelled the arrival of the next member of our family before I heard her soprano trill. The sickly sweet odor of Givenchy L’Interdit preceded my stepmother before she took one step into the room. Violeta never left the house without dousing herself in it.
My brother sniffed and looked up.
“Three, two, one…” Ronan counted down, then pointed to the door just as our stepmother burst in, followed by Shea.
“Darlings, I’m here! Oh, my Niall, look at you.”
Though she had lived in this country for close to thirty-five years, Violeta’s thick Spanish accent hadn’t softened a bit. She entered the hospital room like one of the catwalks she’d graced back when she’d charmed Dad into walking out of his marriage and down the aisle with her.
Today, she was decked out head-to-toe in a feather-covered dress almost certainly designed by Rosado, the fashion house Dad had gifted her for their tenth anniversary so she could become a “designer.” It didn’t matter how many celebrities they bribed into wearing her monstrosities; Rosado was an irritating loss against the company’s bottom line.
Even more irritating because it fell under my purview.
Dad always said “just fuckin’ fix it” whenever I brought it up. And Violeta didn’t give a good goddamn. She only wanted all eyes on her, all the time, and refused to reduce the seventy-thousand-a-month fucking plant budget.
Owen turned his glower away from her. Ronan went back to eyeing the Queen of Hearts, Liam rolled his eyes, and I checked my phone to see if Ruth, my assistant, had gotten back to me.
She hadn’t. I crossed the room to greet my sister as she followed Violeta inside, along with Mac, our head of private security, who must have been tasked with rounding the two of them up. By this point, we were all crammed around the periphery, except for Ronan in the bedside chair.
“Shea.” I gave her a kiss on the cheek, then nodded at Mac. “Mac.”
“Sir.” The big man swept the room with his eyes, then stepped out to take his customary place by the door.
“Big brother.” My sister tossed her dark auburn hair over a sun-kissed shoulder that told me she had been spending some time in the sun. Probably in St. Bart’s, on the family yacht. “You look like shit.”
“Good to see you too.”
With almost twenty years between us, Shea sometimes seemed more like my kid than my kid sister.
While Ronan and Owen had always been, at best, apathetic toward her, I’d been old enough to appreciate the difficulty of being the only daughter of the Black dynasty.
I’d also been around enough to take her under my wing until she left for boarding school, then university.
She had come home from college with a Valentino suit and a freshly bribed business degree and told everyone over breakfast that she was ready to take her place with the rest of us at Blackguard.
Violeta had cooed with pride.
My brothers had laughed.
Dad had gone back to reading the Journal.
And like a balloon, Shea had deflated completely.