Chapter 42 Sky-High Purgatory
SKY-HIGH PURGATORY
Brendan
Once, I loved sitting in my office at the top of the Blackguard Holding. Another “aerie,” as Simone would call it, it was a refuge from where I could look over Boston, imagine flight across the city, and find a bit of respite from the incessant demands of my daily life.
Now, however, this place felt like a prison.
It had been almost twenty-four hours since Simone had fled the penthouse and Owen’s revelation had blown over my carefully constructed house of cards. Phone calls had gone straight to voicemail, texts weren’t even left on read, and I was losing my mind.
Ruth had been fielding calls all morning after I’d canceled two meetings and a conference call with Tokyo. The financial blogs were already starting to hum with rumors of my demise. I couldn’t have cared less.
Not until I figured out where she was.
The intercom buzzed on my desk. “Mr. Black? Your brother and Mr. Kelly are here.”
Before she had even finished speaking, the door opened, and Ronan and Liam walked in, their faces inscribed with the grim reality of the situation.
“You look like shit.” Ronan flopped into one of the leather chairs across from my desk and yanked at his collar.
Despite being brought up in the family, there was something about a suit that had always chafed Ronan, like a tie felt more like a noose to him.
“Matsumoto was thrilled with your no-show, by the way. Super fun to step in for you on an account I had never even looked at before. Why didn’t you ask Owen?
He jerks off to opportunities like this. ”
“Do you want a participation trophy?” I didn’t even bother turning away from the window. No one got the benefit of even the faintest courtesy today.
“No, but an explanation would be nice. You hibernate up here like a winter troll and Owen’s gone missing too. What the fuck is going on?”
I didn’t answer. No one but Owen and our head of security, Mac, knew what had happened last night with Simone. Even Liam just had bits and pieces. Right now, the safety of the woman I loved—yes, loved—was in the hands of someone else, and I wasn’t dealing with it well.
I caught Ronan and Liam sharing a covert glance as I turned around.
Liam took the other chair. “We need to talk.”
“If this is about the Japanese contracts, I already told you, today is not the day.”
“This is about you acting like a complete fucking moron,” Ronan interrupted. “You’ve been holed up here all morning, and Ruth says you got here at two this morning and started cancelling appointments for the rest of the week.”
I scowled. “I needed to get a head start on things.”
“What, like roasting hobbits before the sun rises? What the fuck is going on?”
Liam leaned forward, his elbows braced on his knees. “Does this have to do with Simone? Or the Huntingtons?”
“Don’t say her name.”
Ronan’s brows lifted. “Are you still fucking with Huntingtons? Those fuckers are half mob. I see them all the time in Vegas, and let me tell you, I would never sit down at a table with any of them unless I wanted to get knifed.” He shook his head.
“Please tell me this isn’t all over a woman, Brendan. ”
“She’s not just any woman. She’s…mine.” The words tumbled out before I could stop them, and then I was slumping into my desk chair, exhausted.
Christ, just admitting the fact out loud took something out of me. As if it forced me to acknowledge how much her absence hurt.
And I’d done it to her.
Ronan examined me for a long time. His mask of humor cut through the shrewd gaze that only came out every so often.
Then he seemed to make a decision.
“Yeah, we know,” he said quietly. “That’s why we’re here.”
I couldn’t even meet their gazes, instead fixated with underlining random words on a document in front of me.
I was fidgeting like a teenage girl.
I was a fucking mess.
“There’s nothing to talk about,” I managed. “It’s over. She knows what I did, and she’s gone. Left yesterday morning.”
I didn’t mention that I’d been trying to track her down since, to no avail.
“What did you do?” Ronan asked.
“What I always do. Acted in the company’s best interests instead of my own.”
“He sold the mortgage on her family’s farm,” Liam said. “I assume that’s what you mean.”
I swallowed. “I had to.”
Ronan reeled. “You sold her farm to that shitweasel? Why the fuck would you do that?”
I stared down at the document. My vision blurred. “Because I had to.”
“I don’t believe that. Since when do you have to do anything you don’t want to do?”
“Since I met the woman of my dreams!” I shouted with a swing of my hand that sent a cup of pens flying across the office.
Liam and Ronan watched the pens scattered over the carpet with bemused expressions, then turned to me with patience I didn’t think I’d ever possess again.
“Well,” Ronan said a few minutes later. “The jig, as they say, is up.”
I glared. “What are you talking about?”
He tipped his head like a speculative crane.
“You must really think we’re all idiots.
Dad’s in the hospital for all of two seconds, suddenly there’s a vote for CEO going before our very conservative board members, and you show up with a pretty princess fiancée you met five minutes earlier?
” He snorted. “You didn’t think you actually fooled anyone, did you?
Dad was just so goddamn thrilled his plan to make one of us procreate worked, he wouldn’t have cared if you married a test tube incubator. ”
“Except it didn’t work,” Liam pointed out wryly. “Because you fell in love with her instead, didn’t you?”
The paper under my hands crumpled. I wanted to smash something all over again. “That’s…correct.”
“Have you tried to explain things to her?”
“Explain what? That I sold her family’s legacy to save my ass?
That the cost of having her niece back was a choice between losing my reputation or taking away everything else she cares about, so I chose myself?
” Bitterness sliced through my laughter like a scalpel. “The truth doesn’t make it any better.”
Liam shrugged as he crossed one ankle over his knee. “Maybe not, but the truth is always worth something. If she loves you, she might forgive more than you think.”
His eyes glinted as he said it. Not for the first time, I wondered what kinds of secrets lay behind that affable facade.
Liam’s mother was one of the most cutthroat people I’d ever known.
The apple couldn’t fall far from the tree, but I’d never seen anything but Liza’s competence rub off on her son.
“Just get it back,” Ronan put in. “Why the fuck not? What was her sad little farm worth on the appraisal? Ten million? Twenty?”
“Eight point two,” Liam provided. “But it has three loans against the property, so maybe fourteen altogether? Still a bargain, considering that Owen planned to sell the livestock and turn the whole thing into an airport. It was the centerpiece of the Ventnor development he was putting together with Ezra.”
I sat up. “Ezra was involved in that too?”
Liam nodded. “A backend investor, but yeah. It was his pet project too. Sounds like he convinced the dad to buy the mortgages and properties outright from you to cut Owen out.”
“Jesus, I have never been so glad to be a third child in my life,” Ronan remarked. “I’ll take being the chaos agent of the family over first-born daddy issues and second-born invisibility any fucking day.”
Liam chuckled. I glared.
“So offer Ezra double,” Ronan went on like we were discussing the weather. “Triple. Even at thirty mil, is, what, the cost of one of the yachts? And then you’ll win your pretty princess back in the process.”
“He won’t accept,” I said. “Huntington wanted either my shares in the company and a seat on the board or the farm. And she won’t take me back anyway.”
I rubbed my face. God, I was so stupid. And Ezra Huntington was much smarter than I realized.
What a worthless fool I was.
Ronan looked me over, that sharp edge reappearing in his gaze. “You really are a moron. Since when do you take a bad outcome lying down?”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t think there was a point.
“The Brendan Black I know would ruin any asshole who even breathed wrong in his direction. The Black Prince takes no prisoners. Why wouldn’t he fight for his family?”
“Simone isn’t family,” I said, but the words felt like a lie. Maybe because…God, because I wanted her to be.
“She could be,” Liam echoed my thoughts. “If you fight for her like you fight for everything else.”
“How can I fight for her if she won’t even take my calls? She never wants to see me again.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. Even a degenerate like me knows you have to tell her the truth,” Ronan snapped.
“You explain clearly what you did. Why it was fucked up. You promise her the goddamn moon and do whatever it takes to get it right.” He bared his teeth in a parody of a smile.
“It’s called accountability, friends. See what a good therapist does? ”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” I snapped. “If what it takes is giving up my part of the company, that gives you a lane to step right in.”
“So what if it does? I don’t think the question is whether or not this would benefit me or Owen or even Shea in the little dogfight Daddy dearest has set up.
The question is whether you care more about that than you do about her.
” He sat back in the chair like a man who’d just consumed a big meal. “Your choice, big brother.”
I blinked. He was right.
And it wasn’t even a choice at all.
I reached for my phone. “I’ll try to call her again.”
But before I could, a text lit up my screen from an unfamiliar number.
Blocked Number
573512, -72.551498
I turned the phone. “What the fuck does this mean?”
Liam leaned forward to look. “They’re coordinates.”
“Why the fuck would someone send me—”
But before I could finish, a picture appeared below the text. A pair of hands, bound with a rope behind the metal back of a chair. Strong and feminine, with short oval nails and an engagement ring on her left hand.
Hands that had mesmerized me with their competence and stability as they kneaded dough, rolled out pastry, or even just stroked my cheek.
“Simone.” I could barely breathe. “Fuck.”
Ronan was already out of his seat. “Looks like Ezra figured out a Plan B. You ready to wage a healthy little war now, brother?”
I had no time for jokes as I was already flying out of the room. “I have to find her. I have to get her safe.”
“Already calling Mac,” Liam assured me as they followed me out of the office.
My employees watched with curious glances as I sprinted for the elevator, my brother and Liam in close pursuit.
I didn’t notice any of them.
Somewhere out there, Simone was hurting. Suffering because of what I had put her through.
The choice I’d already made evaporated as the elevator doors opened.
There was only one option now.
Find my girl and bring her home.