Chapter 35 You, Me, and a Ransom
YOU, ME, AND A RANSOM
Brendan
There were days I wondered if I was missing something. An essential piece that made others human.
People are as territorial as any wild animal. It’s why, when we’re wronged, so many can’t use logic—they act on their instincts to protect what’s theirs at all costs. We think it’s a virtue, but it’s not. It’s just desperation.
I’d always had the ability to step outside that basest of natures.
My brothers and even my father all tended to be creatures of passion in one way or another.
Owen was fueled by competition with me. Ronan by guilt.
Shea by pleasure. My father, his pride. Their emotions were their weaknesses, and I’d never wanted to be exploited like that by anyone.
And so, what made people call me The Black Prince—my black, unfeeling heart—was the most evolved thing about me. While my family ran on emotion, I functioned on one thing: cold, pure logic.
Until now.
As I stood on the sixteenth floor of The Huntington Group’s latest development, a high-rise at the northwest corner of Southie, violence filled my soul, the sort that I hadn’t known since I had lived in this very neighborhood.
I looked over the place that had birthed me in the days before Blackguard Holding was little more than a betting room in the back of an Irish pub.
The shitty row house that had once housed Dad’s original bookie operation now held a cafe that sold seven-dollar lattes.
Closer to the harbor was the building that had replaced the even shittier house where I’d been born, where Ronan, Owen, and I had all grown up for the early years of our lives.
Even when Blackguard was turning into something more than a gambling hall, even when we had the money to leave the old neighborhood, Niall, the cheap bastard, kept his family in the neighborhood he knew.
Every spare cent he had went back into growing Blackguard. There wasn’t a lot for us until later, when the old man realized he needed to train up the next generation to take his place one day.
Or maybe that was the point.
The others didn’t remember it so well, but I did. The peeling paint. The brown water. The gunshots around the corner.
I was four the first time Dad let me hold a gun.
Five when he taught me to throw a punch.
Six when he started pitting me against Owen in the backyard.
We did that even when we were home from boarding school, until Niall realized he couldn’t nab a supermodel for a third wife while still living in a Southie dump. That was when he started buying up the rest of the neighborhood instead of living in it.
But we still came back.
All of us still came back.
Maybe that was why even standing in the half-finished high-rise erected by The Huntington Group, right here on the edge of my family’s territory, I was filled with rage.
Boston was the place, but this area had always been my birthright more than the rest of it.
Or maybe it was because these fuckers had just taken something—really someone—that I also considered mine.
I didn’t know this little girl. But Simone did and loved her.
That made her someone I needed to protect.
Footsteps sounded on the concrete subfloors, echoing through the skeletons of the apartments-to-be.
“I hear congratulations are in order.”
I remained where I was, content for the moment to examine Ezra Huntington’s reflection in the windows.
He didn’t look like a criminal, but in my experience, most criminals rarely did.
Neither did he look like the son of another massive investor on the East Coast. Instead of a suit, he wore the stale uniform of countless students/baristas/struggling artists in Boston: Carhartt pants, a shearling-lined denim jacket, not-quite-distressed-enough construction boots, and a beanie atop a face with two inches of patchy beard coming in.
He looked like he should be working on his laptop at one of those coffeehouses, not conducting a ransom up here with me.
I could hear Ronan cracking at least five jokes within the first thirty seconds of seeing him. How’s that latte art coming, asshole? he’d ask. Or maybe: Careful. Don’t want to trip and get dust on those brand-new booties.
“You’re late,” I said.
“I’m right on time.”
I glanced at my watch as I turned from the window. “It’s 7:04. You’re fuckin’ late, or are you going to lie about that too, Huntington?”
To his credit, he didn’t cower, despite the fact that I was at least six inches taller than him. Or by the fact that in my barely concealed rage, the South Boston was starting to come out in my speech too.
Instead, he just smirked.
He was baiting me, of course. That was his goal.
Well, that was his first mistake—letting me see any item on his agenda.
“Let me guess.” I crossed my arms. “The move into mortgage shorts was supposed to be a pleasant surprise for Daddy, but it didn’t quite go as planned. So now you’ve got to make up for the losses by blackmailing me. Have I got that right?”
He said nothing, but the coloring in his cheeks told me I was right on the money.
Typical.
I started to walk in a slow circle around him.
It was almost too easy, throwing him off this way.
Better men knew it for the power play it was—a move to center them as prey—and they’d almost immediately disrupt the circle, whether they knew it or not.
Idiots like the one in front of me tended to freeze like a deer in headlights.
Wait like fools for the invisible trap to be set.
Ezra turned with me but didn’t move out of the invisible circle, like he’d trapped himself. “You don’t know anything.”
“I know enough.” I let him sit with that for a bit while I walked. It was only after I’d completed the circle that I turned to him directly. “Where’s the kid?”
That smirk reemerged. “Oh, I think we have some other things to discuss before—”
“Where?” I snapped just hard enough that he recoiled, hands up.
“Easy, Black, easy. What do you take me for?”
“I don’t know. Police might like the name kidnapper.”
He just snorted. “I’ll tell you when I get what I asked for.”
“You’re not going to get shit. You think this entire building isn’t already crawling with security? You think I didn’t have a fuckin’ manhunt out for this child and a tail on you the second I knew you were responsible?”
It was a bluff, sure. I’d tried to tail him last night, but Mac wasn’t able to find him with so little information.
Huntington rolled his eyes. “Big bad Brendan Black, threatening the world. You forget you’re not speaking to one of your lackeys. My family has just as many resources as yours. Maybe more, since we don’t act like Boy Scouts to get shit done.”
I snorted. This fucker had no idea what my family had done to get where we were today. All that I’d take to the grave.
“Ultimately, it’s our story versus your pathetic future sister-in-law,” he said.
“Do you know anything about the family you’re marrying into, Black?
I went to high school in that bumfuck town.
My father’s last attempt at turning me into something ‘respectable.’ He didn’t realize that the only thing to do in Woodstock, Vermont, was getting high and fucking milkmaids. ”
It took me four seconds to lug him against a steel pole running from the ceiling to the floor and land a punch to his gut before dropping him again.
“Goddamn it!” he choked out.
“Keep talking like that, and you’ll get worse than a half-assed undercut.” I straightened my collar. “Where’s the girl?”
To my surprise, he leered. “Oh, she’s here.”
“Then make the call.”
He spat. A bit of blood hit the floor. “Not without my due. You know the terms.”
I shook my head. “You fuckin’ moron. Did you really think I was going to hand over whole parts of my company? You don’t think you’re gonna get nailed for trafficking and extortion and a whole bunch of other shit?”
“Based on what? This little girl found us. My assistant found her wandering around outside some dump in Rhode Island alone and unsupervised. We tried to take her home, but it was not a place fit for a child. Her criminal of a mother missing, drugs present, open containers of alcohol, not to mention the place was covered in filth. We were only holding onto her until CPS called us back.”
The pieces of his story hit me like bricks—hard, then sliding into place.
Ezra was stupid, but not enough to make such a claim without evidence.
And one night with Selena Bishop in my house had told me the woman wasn’t worth the gum on Simone’s shoe.
Conveying the message verbally through Selena, wherever they had found her, was yet another way to maintain plausible deniability.
I could easily see how they’d set it up. That shithole where Simone had lived could be broken into with a toothpick. Even if Selena didn’t actually do the things he was suggesting, what little Simone had told me meant that most judges wouldn’t be predisposed to side with her in a trial.
The unfortunate reality was that Ezra was right. I wasn’t the only person in town with money to buy people off. Even if that was the laziest way of doing things.
But he was wrong about one thing: I did have the bigger wallet.
And I knew a negotiation when I saw one.
“Proof of life,” I demanded.
Ezra smirked, then pulled out his phone. “Call Aaron.”
One ring, then an immediate answer. “Boss.”
“Put the girl on.”
“No!” shouted the voice of what was undoubtedly a small female child. “I don’t wanna talk in your stupid phone.”
Ezra ended the call. “You got what you wanted. Now I want mine.”
I crouched down so we were eye to eye. “You’re not quite as stupid as I thought, Ezra. You know you’ll never get a piece of Blackguard. What’s it really going to take?”
“You think this is a negotiation, Black? What kind of idiot do you think I am?”
Before I could reply, my phone buzzed in my pocket. I stood to read the incoming message.
Ruth: You were right. His father has no idea.