Chapter 6
THE GREEK CHORUS I NEVER FUCKING ASKED FOR
RONAN
“You ready?” Mac cut the engine of the Range Rover, and the engine gave a sigh I felt in my soul.
A familiar neo-classical fountain gurgled outside my window, a taunting monstrosity full of fake cherubs whizzing water out of their dicks. On the other side of their sprays, my father’s house loomed.
I glared at the too-big monstrosity, a schizophrenic fever dream from the nineties that included elements from at least twenty different architectural periods. Doric pillars paired with colonial bricks. Bay windows with French shutters. English gardens with Hellenistic sculptures.
I hadn’t grown up here—that privilege belonged to Shea, and she could only claim full-time residency for the first six years of her life until, like the rest of us, boarding school called.
My brothers and I had come up together on harder streets, first in South Boston before it was transformed into a yuppie playground, then one step up in a house in Jamaica Plain.
“Not even a little.”
I knew what was waiting for me. Family meetings were only slightly more civilized versions of those backyard boxing matches where Dad used to make his sons beat the shit out of each other while he and his cronies placed bets from plastic lawn chairs.
Once a bookie, always a bookie. Even when you’re an eighty-year-old billionaire and the prizes are executive roles in your company instead of a Mexican Coke and one of your cigars.
Mac opened his door. “It’s better if you stay quiet.”
I snorted. “What’s the fun in that?”
“It might get you what you want, if you figure out what that is.”
I knew what he was saying. Maybe being the chaos agent of the Black family hadn’t served me well. I’d been offered a different track, and if I was smart enough to play my cards right, I could get on it for good.
But that depended on me knowing what I wanted, and everyone knew I didn’t want anything.
The problem was, they were wrong. Or they had been wrong for the last twenty-four hours, since those elevator doors had shut on Delaney Fisher.
I’d taken one extra day in Vegas to hush any potential police investigations or missing people requests and calm my guilt over condemning the father of a seven-year-old girl to the desert.
Okay, so maybe I stuck around to see if a certain green-eyed wife might turn back up at my suite.
No such luck.
I owed my lawyer and her a call, and in that order, but I hadn’t contacted either one about the annulment, settling instead for the occasional text just to make sure Laney was actually real.
I was still waiting for that unsettling sensation to dissipate. The one that said that I absolutely should not have let Laney Fisher out of my sight.
I opened my door. “That’s enough friendly advice, Mac Daddy. We both know that in there, you’re Niall’s man.”
Mac didn’t argue. The big man knew who signed his checks.
The carved front doors opened before I even knocked, and we were greeted by Jenkins, the butler Dad had hired with his first million to foster the illusion that Niall Black wasn’t, at his core, just a two-bit backroom gambler.
“Jenks, you old horn-dog.” I slung an arm around his neck and pretended to give him a noogie. “How are you? Still bird-dogging the ladies like it’s a competitive sport? Who’s the latest target—Sally the hot librarian?”
It was a little game we played. I said whatever obnoxious and mildly shocking thing came to mind, and Jenkins pretended I’d asked about the weather.
The butler didn’t so much as blink as he accepted my jacket to stow in the closet. “No, sir. The family is in the second drawing room awaiting your arrival. Shall I get your drink?”
I opened my mouth to accept my preferred vodka soda, but something stopped me. Sea glass eyes in the back of my mind. “Actually, I’ll take a tequila tonight. With a lime.”
Mac and I made our way through the grand foyer and down the herringbone-floored hall to the second drawing room—Dad’s favorite place to hold court.
He wasn’t supposed to be working after having a quadruple bypass two months ago. But we all knew he was doing his best to get back to form before his sons ruined his company, despite the announcement last month that he would be retiring and announcing a permanent heir to his position.
I still had my doubts about whether that would happen, but the man was an octogenarian.
It was time. Even if Brendan had just torched the plan for succession, and now there was no one to take his place.
Well, no one that fit the mold, anyway. And much as he wished otherwise, even Owen wasn’t seen as a serious contender.
And Shea was still practically an adolescent.
The drawing room was already full when I walked in.
Dad sat in his favorite leather chair by a fire that was blazing despite it being almost July.
My stepmother, Violeta, and Shea sat on the sofa next to him, long-necked and elegant like two beautiful cranes.
Liza was there too, roosting on his otherwise with her son Liam—my best friend and one of the company’s lead counsel.
He looked exhausted. No surprise there. Brendan’s little stunt had probably had legal up all week looking for ways out of his dual messes: the one he’d made in the woods and the other with the company.
Based on the bloodthirsty call I’d received three days ago, it sounded more like Brendan had tracked down the people who had kidnapped his woman and conducted an old-fashioned execution.
Christ. That was my domain. They’d get it deemed self-defense, if they hadn’t already. But it was still a bloodthirsty way to protect his girl.
Owen was pacing by the windows, which meant he was either working himself into a rage or trying to fend one off. So, status quo, since Owen was a chip off the old block, a.k.a. a rage-a-holic asshole like the man who sired him.
Only Brendan was missing. We had the bomb he’d dropped instead.
“Look who finally decided to grace us with his presence.” Shea shoved her phone into her purse and slouched onto the couch in a very short skirt, like she was in the VIP section at a nightclub and not her father’s living room.
She crossed one long leg over another and grinned. “Have fun babysitting, Mac?”
Behind me, Mac had taken his usual place near the door. “No better than watching you, Ms. Black.”
Their tête-à-tête was typical. Mac and Shea had a similar routine to me and Jenkins, although he was willing to give Shea a little more of what she dealt, and everyone here was more than happy for him to give Shea a bit of her own medicine.
Shea’s eyes narrowed. Barely twenty-two, she hated being called Ms. Black. Said it made her sound like “one of Daddy’s country club whores.” “You know my name. And I don’t need a babysitter—”
“The incident in Monaco says otherwise.”
Shea’s porcelain features turned nearly the color of her dark red hair. “That was one time.”
“It was three.” Mac examined his nails. “I counted.”
“Shea, darling, don’t argue with the help.” Violeta spoke with her oddly exaggerated Spanish accent as she patted Shea’s arm. Honestly. Yes, she was technically Spanish, but I happened to know she emigrated from Madrid when she was five. The woman grew up in Fort Lauderdale.
“Vi, let them be,” Dad cut in. “Mac’s the only one who can keep her in line. Let him do his damn job.”
That only infuriated Shea more as she stood, ignoring her mother’s attempts to pull her back to the couch. “You work for me too, you Neanderthal.”
“I work for the family,” Mac replied flatly. “And right now, the family needs me to make sure you stop acting like a spoiled brat. So sit down and shut up.”
For a second, I thought Shea might actually throw something at him. It wouldn’t be the first time.
Instead, she stalked to the windows to stand next to Owen while Mac crossed his beefy arms and assumed the statue-like pose that wouldn’t move until this meeting was over.
“Ronan.” Dad’s voice had always grated, like his vocal cords had been run through a wood chipper. The effect had gotten worse since his heart surgery. Or maybe it was just his patience that had gotten shorter in the last months. “Nice of you to show up to your own coronation, boy.”
I accepted my drink from Jenkins, then slid into an empty chair and sat, knees spread, like we were about to Netflix and chill, not interrogate my future. “Coronation, huh? Do I get a crown?”
“No, you get to worry about the stock price,” Owen said. “We’re down eighteen percent since Brendan’s scandal broke. Eighteen fucking percent.”
I swallowed a gulp of tequila. It went down smooth. “I understand what percentages mean, Owen. Shocking, I know, but then again, you’re the jarhead.”
“This isn’t a joke!” Two separate veins now stood out on his forehead.
It was funny. With his black hair and blue eyes, Owen looked nothing like the rest of us, but his temperament was the closest to our father’s.
“The rest of us have been here trying to salvage this company’s reputation now that Brendan ran off with a milkmaid and you’ve been snorting God knows what up your nose in Vegas. ”
“That’s not fair. I always know exactly what’s going up my nose in Vegas. Now, Rio’s a different story, but this wasn’t Carnaval.”
No one laughed. From his position in the doorway, Mac didn’t even blink.
I had to joke. It was either that or describe in excruciating everything I had done for this company—or at least Brendan—in the desert. Things I had been doing for most of my adult life.
But that was sort of the point. Dad knew.
After all, he was the one who had put me up to this shit all those years ago.
Brendan knew, but only for the past few years, when he’d been priming to take over.
Everyone else remained clueless, which was why to them I had to remain nothing but the family joke.
It was also why Owen in particular was undoubtedly incensed about being passed over as the next in line.