Chapter Three #3
"Exactly." Daniel closes his folio and picks it up. "I'll prepare the paperwork for Ms. Payne's trust fund access and guardianship matters. But this conversation..." He looks at each of us. "I was never here for this part."
He leaves, closing the door behind him with a quiet click.
The silence in his wake seems to scream. We're in it now. No lawyer, no buffer, just family and a fourteen-year-old holding a grenade she actually brought the pin for.
“This makes no sense,” Sebastian says, leaning forward. “Why would he buy contaminated property? It's a ticking time bomb. Eventually someone tests the soil, the water. The EPA catches it, or we face lawsuits from neighboring properties."
"He'd have to keep paying off inspectors indefinitely," Lillianna adds, tapping her pen hard on the table. "One person talks, and the whole thing collapses. Dad was ruthless, but he wasn't stupid."
I let out a bitter laugh. “Have you met our Dad? He owns half the state officials. Do you think he cares about adding an EPA inspector to that list? You know how he was; he thought Kentucky land was his birthright to destroy.”
The room falls quiet. Each of us taking in the disaster. Sebastian’s probably calculating the board meetings, environmental certifications, and the green initiatives he’s championed. His face goes sickly white.
Since he took over as head of Blackstone Bourbon, he’s publicly championed environmental responsibility. One of his goals was to make our Kentucky location a green-certified facility. If the media got hold of this, they’d think it was a cover-up.
I’m supposed to be back in Quebec by Monday, but there's no way in hell I'm leaving Sebastian and Lillianna to clean up a mess I helped create. They don’t know it yet, but I'm staying until every piece of Dad's corruption is buried.
Or until it buries us.
“Why the fuck do you have these papers?” I ask.
“My mom. Like I said, they were her insurance policy.”
“Christ,” I grumble. “Your mom should have been a damn politician, not a mistress.”
The conference room falls silent except for the distant hum of the copper stills. Sebastian stares at his wife in a silent conversation. Lillianna stares out the window, probably wishing she’d never returned home. Ivy looks shell-shocked.
The environmental scandal would destroy everything Sebastian has built since taking over.
And my name on the papers, signing off on the deal, might be enough to have the board kick me out of my family’s distillery.
And we’d get the media circus of the illegitimate daughter of our father living with us. Either way, we’re fucked.
I can’t believe I’m even entertaining the idea, but I ask, “And what happens if we can’t stand each other by the end of three months? Which is exactly how this will end.”
“Then I’ll go to New York with my sister. I’ll leave Kentucky, leave everything I’ve ever known.” Her voice wavers just enough to seem genuine.
Fuck me. She’s good. Playing the abandoned child card while holding a gun to our heads. Dad would be proud.
“You’re wasting everyone’s time. We’ll never be family,” I snap. “You’re blackmailing us, for fuck’s sake.”
Madison’s smile turns razor-sharp and I see our father in her so clearly. “It’s the Blackstone way, so you should be used to it.”
Sebastian lets out a harsh laugh. “She’s not wrong. Blackmail runs in the family.” His gaze locks with mine. I see it in the tightness around his eyes. He’s remembering the bet, the way I used Rosalia as leverage against him. “You always did appreciate a good power play, Thorne.”
“And while I’m living with one of you, I’ll share all the environmental papers, that way you can fix his mess,” Madison offers, like she’s some benevolent angel. “Ivy can help.”
Her sister starts in her chair as if waking from a nightmare. “I…”
I scoff. “Help how?”
“She’s an environmental lawyer,” Madison replies.
I shake my head. Work with her when I can't get last night out of my head? Absolutely not. She’s a temptation I don’t need. “We have plenty of lawyers. I’m sure one of them specializes in environmental law.”
“Well, I’m sure as shit not leaving her with you Blackstones. And especially not you,” Ivy fires back.
A flush creeps up from her collarbone, barely visible above the grey blouse. She doesn't touch it. Doesn't acknowledge it.
But I notice. Because I know exactly where that flush starts. And I know exactly how far it travels.
I bite back my response. She wants to think I'm the villain? Fine. Easier that way. Might even be true.
“That’s not a bad idea,” Lillianna taps a pen she’s been holding. “That’s not a bad idea. We could hire Ms. West. We should keep Daniel, hell, all the other attorneys linked to the distilleries, in the dark about this.”
Fuck, she’s right. But I’m not ready to let this happen. “We don’t know her,” I tell the room. “We can’t trust her.”
Lillianna looks at Ivy. “Are you any good?”
She lifts her chin. “Good? I’ve won twenty-eight of my last thirty cases, including the Riverdale watershed suit that made national headlines last year. Forty-seven million dollar settlement. Largest in state history. The EPA now uses my briefs as teaching examples. So yeah, I’m good.”
"Then we hire you. As a consultant," Lillianna clarifies.
"Wait." Ivy holds up a hand. "I work for Huntsman & Fellows in New York. I'd need my firm's approval to take on outside consulting work. And I'd need this in writing: scope, timeline, confidentiality. Everything."
“Then it’s decided?” Madison asks, suddenly sounding like the child she is. “We fix this together.”
“Together, my ass,” I retort at the same time Sebastian says, “Fine.”
Lillianna and Rosalia also agree. What the hell is going on.
I meet Ivy’s eyes across the table. Her shoulders are slumped.
I can practically hear her thoughts. She’s glancing toward the door like she’s calculating the distance to her escape route.
The woman planned on collecting her sister and running back to her life on the East Coast. If she agrees, she’s stuck in Kentucky for three months working with a family she clearly can’t stand.
Wait until I tell them I’m staying until this mess is fixed.
She’ll probably kidnap and smuggle Madison back to New York.
Not that they’ll be living with me, with any of us.
I’m not pushing them off on my brother. We’ll set them up somewhere out of the way.
Madison should be used to that, given that’s how she lived with her mom.
And at least with distance between us, I won't have to deal with this ridiculous pull I still feel toward her.
I'm a one-night guy. Always have been. The attraction should have died the second I came.
Instead, she sits across from me in that professional armor, and all I can think about is peeling it off her.
“Fine,” Ivy sighs. “If my firm agrees.”
The words land like a gavel. Three months in Kentucky, when I should be back in Quebec by Monday. Three months cleaning up Dad's corruption with my name on the evidence. Three months playing strangers with a woman I can still taste on my tongue.
And somehow, I know with absolute certainty that nothing about this arrangement will go according to plan. Not the environmental cleanup. Not the housing situation. Not the careful distance I need to keep from Ivy.
I'm completely fucked.