Chapter Three #2
What I sure as hell didn't know was that Madison has a half-sister.
Or that I'd already had that half-sister naked in my bed less than twelve hours ago.
Fuck.
I have to know. “Exactly how are you two related?” I swallow and nearly choke on my dread. “Same mother or…”
Different fathers. Please say different fathers.
Adrenaline dumps into my system, but it’s not the rush I get closing a deal or the thrill of a gamble. Just pure, cold dread.
“Yes, same mother. Different father.” She meets my eyes — or almost. She addresses a point just past my shoulder rather than looking directly at me. Close enough to look composed. Not quite close enough to be honest. “And who are you?”
The relief is so intense, I can’t suck in a breath, can’t answer her. Daniel tells her for me. “He is Thorne Blackstone.”
Ivy goes still, her face draining of color. My reputation precedes me. She glances at Madison, then back at me, and I can see her calculating, weighing what to say, what to reveal. Then she simply nods. She's going to play this smart. We're strangers.
Good. It was just sex—something I usually forget by morning.
Except I haven't forgotten.
And even now, I want her again.
“I’m Blackstone Distillery’s head attorney,” Daniel continues, introducing himself and everyone else at the table.
Ivy nods at each introduction, her posture perfect, her face giving nothing away.
A beat passes. Then she sits forward, returning her attention to Daniel.
"I want to discuss Madison's trust fund. Louis set up a trust fund. Five million dollars accessible when she turns eighteen, or earlier with guardian and family approval. She’s moving to New York with me, and we need early access for school and living expenses.”
Daniel flips through his papers. “I don’t have a record of any trust.”
“Because it wasn’t handled through Blackstone lawyers. Louis used a firm in Lexington.” Ivy slides a folder across the table. “Everything’s in there.”
Madison sits forward. “Actually, that isn’t the reason for the meeting.” Her voice is shaky, but her chin lifts in defiance that reminds me of every manipulative bastard I’ve ever done business with. Warning bells blare in me.
“What are you talking about?” Ivy asks. Confusion strips away her professional mask, and for a second, I see the unguarded and real woman from the train again.
“I’m not going back to New York with you.”
Ivy blinks. “Excuse me?”
“Not yet, anyway. I want to finish out my school year and spend the summer here.” Madison’s gaze drops to her hands and she picks at her nail polish. It’s the first truly teenage thing she’s done since walking in here. “Sorry, I didn’t tell you.”
"Sorry you didn't—" Ivy takes a deep breath. "Madison, we talked about this. We had a plan. You agreed—"
“No, you told me the plan. I didn’t agree to it.”
"You're fourteen. You don't get to just change your mind about where you live." Ivy looks around the table like she's searching for an ally.
"I know, and I'm sorry, but—"
"But nothing. You can't stay here alone and I have to get back to my job," Ivy says, her words careful and measured despite the edge in her voice.
“I’ll stay with one of them.” She looks at us, then quickly away.
"Absolutely not," Sebastian says.
"The hell you will," I add.
Sebastian turns to me. "Not that you'd be here to deal with it anyway. When's your train back to Quebec? Tomorrow?"
"Why, you miss your big brother already?" I fire back.
"I miss having someone else here to handle Dad's messes instead of it always landing on me."
"Boys," Lillianna warns.
She shrugs her bony shoulders. “Fine. I’ll tell the Bluegrass Buzz how our dad hit that family’s minivan because he was too focused on the blowjob my mom was giving him.”
Ivy gasps, “Madison.”
“How the hell did you hear about that?” I demand.
She looks at me with our father’s cold blue eyes, the same eyes I have, and repeats what she told me in the funeral home. “I go unnoticed by most adults. And I listen.”
“Then tell them, kid,” I bluff. “After you do, you’ll want nothing more than to get the hell out of here. You think life is rough now as the rumored illegitimate child of Louis Blackstone, wait until your classmates get hold of your tell-all. Kids are cruel.”
“So are adults,” she fires back.
Daniel clears his throat. "Ms. Payne, I should inform you that if you're considering any public disclosure involving Blackstone Distillery's business operations or the family's private affairs, there could be significant legal ramifications—"
"For who?" Madison asks. "I didn't sign an NDA."
Daniel rubs his temples. "That's... technically correct. However—"
“However nothing,” I interrupt. I point at Madison.“Listen to me. I’m not putting my mother through you. She just lost her husband. And while their marriage was far from perfect, she doesn’t deserve your disrespect.”
“I’m not doing this to disrespect your mom, but you’re forgetting I just lost mine. And my Dad. Do I have to lose my friends? My life here?” Tears fill her eyes, but I refuse to let them touch me. “And my mom was a good mom.”
I scoff. Good moms don't arm their fourteen-year-olds with blackmail material and call it insurance.
Ivy slides an arm around Madison in a side hug and the teen leans into it. Madison turns. “I’m sorry, Ivy. But I barely know you. And everything I know is here. My friends, my school. I don’t want to leave.”
“But I can’t stay. I’ll lose my job,” Ivy explains, rubbing Madison’s arm.
“Tell them you’re working on my guardianship proceedings and I’m refusing to leave.”
“They won’t care.”
“They will when you tell them I’m a Blackstone.”
“I don’t—”
“You’re not a Blackstone,” I tell Madison.
“I have my mom’s last name, but your dad’s name is on my birth certificate.”
“He would never be that stupid,” I counter.
“They made a deal: he signed the birth certificate, she signed an NDA not to tell anyone that he's my father, unless he died. He set up a trust for me and wanted to make sure I got it.”
And what does he care if we have to deal with this going public after he’s in the ground? Typical Louis Blackstone. Bitterness damn near chokes me.
“How do you even know about all this?” Sebastian asks.
“My mom told me.” Her voice cracks slightly. She looks around the table, and for just a second, I see the scared kid beneath the blackmailer. Fourteen. Orphaned. Desperate.
Christ. I almost feel bad for her. Almost. Then I remember my mother's face at the funeral. This kid isn’t completely alone, and she's also holding a gun to our heads.
“That doesn’t make you our problem,” I tell her.
“Wow. You’re an asshole,” Ivy mutters.
I look at her. “I am.”
Madison ignores us. “All I want is three months. With you. With my family.”
Family. Christ. The kid’s been in our lives for less than an hour and she’s already throwing that word around like it means something. Like the Blackstone name isn’t synonymous with betrayal and broken promises.
“Three months to what?” I ask, though I already know she’s about to pitch me some sob story designed to tug at heartstrings I don’t have.
“To get to know each other. To see if I belong here. And to give you time to figure out if you want me to belong here.”
Clever little girl. She’s making it sound like she’s doing us a favor, like we have a choice in any of this.
“I don’t need three months to know the answer. We’ll never be family,” I tell her.
She flinches, and Ivy mutters, “I can’t believe I…such an asshole.”
"Fine!" Madison jolts in her seat like a nervous bird. "I didn't want to play this card." She reaches into the bag at her feet and pulls out a manila folder, sliding it across the table toward me. "But here."
I don't touch it. "What is this?"
"One page. The real environmental assessment for the Frankfort facility. Four years ago." She folds her hands in her lap like she's trying to keep them still. "Mom kept the originals. I only brought one, but I have more."
Sebastian picks it up first. His eyes scan it, His face goes through three different colors. He sets it down carefully and slides it to me without a word.
I lean forward to take it. Ivy sits back exactly as much as I move toward her. Not flinching. Calibrated. The kind of distance you maintain when proximity is dangerous.
The Blackstone letterhead is missing, but the property address isn't. Neither is the date. Four years ago, exactly when the acquisition went through. The contamination readings are flagged in red. Groundwater. Soil. The inspector's name at the bottom: Williams, K.
My stomach drops.
"This could be fabricated," I say, because I need it to be.
"It could be," Madison agrees, with a calm that guts me. "But it's not. And you know it's not, because you recognize that property."
I do. The Frankfort parcel. Dad had pitched it as a strategic expansion. Telling me that it’s perfectly positioned for distribution, adjacent to existing operations. The price had been suspiciously low, but he'd explained it away. Motivated seller. Tight timeline. Family connection.
I'd signed the acquisition papers. Taken his word instead of digging.
I'm a fucking idiot.
I was thirty, thirty-one. Old enough to know better.
But when Dad pushed a deal across my desk and wanted it badly, I'd fallen right back into the old pattern — don't look too close, don't ask too many questions.
Like I was still the seventeen-year-old who'd learned what happened when you challenged Louis Blackstone.
My name is on those papers. My signature authorized this disaster.
Daniel takes the sheet from me and sets it down.
His face goes carefully, professionally blank.
"I need to stop right there." He stands.
"If what you're discussing involves potential environmental violations or regulatory non-compliance, this falls outside my purview as Blackstone Bourbon's counsel of record. Conflict of interest."
"Plausible deniability," Sebastian says quietly.