CHAPTER ONE GRIFFEN
Ihated my desk. This office had been mine for the better part of a decade.
It should have felt like home, but I’d never been a desk kind of guy.
Any excuse to get in the field. I did my job, didn't slack on the paperwork, but I never felt truly alive sitting behind a desk. Now it looked like I’d be stuck here for the rest of my life.
One shot from a handgun and I’d been down.
Shoulder wounds are a lot more complicated than people think.
The bullet had nicked an artery and torn through ligaments and tendons, breaking bones along the way.
Hours of surgery, weeks in a sling, followed by months of physical therapy. I was almost as good as new. Almost.
For a guy with a regular job, almost would have been good enough. For me, almost meant the end of my career. It had to be my right fucking arm, didn't it? My brain might have the reaction time I needed, but my right arm would always be a fraction too slow.
No matter how much I wanted to be in the field, wanted the adrenaline and the danger, I wouldn't risk a client's life to soothe my ego.
I was grounded. I’d have to find a way to live with that.
I'm not a brooder. I grew up in a family of volatile personalities, surrounded by rage and betrayal, malice and grudges. I'd walked away when I was twenty-two, resentful and angry, but once I’d tasted the freedom of life away from my family I’d made a decision.
I wasn't going to let the bullshit get me down.
There’s always a bright side, always a reason to laugh. I'd never give in to hate. I'd seen what happened to people who did that, seen the way it sucked the life from them, leaving them dried up, bitter husks.
That wouldn’t be me. That would never be me.
For fourteen years, I'd managed to hold on to that, always ready with a smile, always looking for the silver lining. And now this. Holed up in my office during the day, hiding in my house at night. Grumbling, growling, and snapping at my friends, the friends who’d become my family.
I knew I was being an asshole. I tried to smile, to laugh, tried to pretend everything was great, but we all knew it was a lie.
Everything wasn't fucking great. Everything was all fucked up.
A buzz sounded on my phone. Alice at the front desk. I picked up the handset and winced as I heard myself bark, “What?”
I was being a bastard. Alice was like a sister, now married to my best friend. She was family. She deserved better than me being a dick.
Before I could apologize, she let out her sparkling pixie’s laugh and said, “Hello to you, too, sunshine. You have a visitor. Says her name is Hope Daniels. Should I bring her back?”
Hope Daniels?
Not possible.
What were the chances the name could be a coincidence?
None. No chance.
I cursed the universe. Kick a man while he's down, why don't you? Whatever dark force had brought fucking Hope Daniels to Atlanta, it could just take her back.
Twenty-year-old Griffen would have welcomed her with open arms. The Griffen of six months ago would have at least been curious. Me now? With this fucking bum shoulder aching like a rotten tooth, I wanted to tell Hope to fuck off and get out.
No good could come of Hope Daniels walking back into my life.
“Griffen? You want me to just leave her standing here until she gathers dust?”
I couldn't help the tiny smile that spread across my face. I shut it down. Might as well get this over with. I’d find out what Hope wanted and get rid of her. No big deal.
“Bring her back.”
“Righty-ho!” Alice hung up.
Hope fucking Daniels.
Alice was going to want to know who she was. Cooper, Evers, Knox, everyone would want to know who she was. When was the last time a woman had walked into the office and asked for me? Never. I kept my personal life separate from work. Always.
Hope wasn't personal. Not like that.
She wasn't a woman, she was a sign of the fucking apocalypse.
All too soon, Alice swung open the door of my office. My first thought was that she must have made a mistake. The woman standing beside her was not Hope Daniels.
She was tall and slender like Hope, with the same sandy brown hair and cognac colored eyes, but this was not my Hope.
With her hair scraped back into a tight knot at the base of her skull, her face pale and eyes flat, she looked more like a scarecrow than a woman.
Hope had always been slender, slight of build despite her height, but this woman was scrawny.
Brittle. Her face was devoid of makeup. She lacked all ornamentation outside of a simple set of gold studs in her ears.
The woman who called herself Hope Daniels stood in front of me wearing a beige suit that fit her as if it had been purchased for someone else, the jacket and skirt boxy, overwhelming her frame and hiding any hint of the body beneath.
Her matching pumps were dull and serviceable. She was neat and clean, but utterly and completely bland. Forgettable. I studied her, searching for any hint of the Hope I’d known so well.
My Hope had reminded me of Alice. She’d been far quieter than our outspoken office manager, but Hope had the same core of steel and, like Alice, a funky, quirky style all her own. I’d loved keeping an eye out for the secrets she’d hide in her school uniform.
A headband embroidered with skeletons. Socks with mermaids woven into the pattern. She’d spent her allowance looking for ways to be different despite her guardian’s demand that she fit in. My Hope wouldn’t have been caught dead in beige.
Alice waited at the door, expectant, her eyes ping-ponging between me and Hope. When neither of us said a word, she raised an eyebrow and offered, “Coffee? Tea?”
“No, thanks, Alice. Hope won't be here long enough for that.”
Narrowing her eyes at my rudeness, Alice shrugged a shoulder and excused herself. I had no doubt her next stop was Cooper's office. Whatever. They were my friends, and this absolutely qualified as gossip. If the tables had been turned, I would have done the same.
Not only was a female visitor unusual, I was never rude. Well, lately, yeah, but it was only to the friends I knew would put up with my bullshit. Not in the office with a stranger. But then, Hope Daniels was no stranger.
In a low voice that held no inflection, Hope said, “May I take a seat?”
I leaned back in my chair. “Suit yourself.”
No reaction from Hope. There'd been a day when an unkind comment from me would make her eyes fill with tears—not that she'd ever been subject to an unkind comment from me. Not until the end. In the end, there'd been tears all around.
She sat, smoothing her ugly skirt over her legs and crossing her feet at the ankle. It was like the Hope I'd known had been wiped clean, an automaton substituted in her place. This new Hope grated against every nerve.
Hope had been a girl when I’d walked away from Sawyers Bend. Only a girl, but she’d been the spark that set the fire, the one who’d turned the gears that ended in heartbreak and loss, in a grudge that would last the rest of my life.
“What do you want?”
Showing her first sign of weakness, Hope drew in a long breath and looked down at the purse she’d stowed neatly on her lap. When she looked back at me, her eyes held the faintest glimmer of emotion.
The last words she'd spoken to me had shattered my life. This time was no different.
“Your father's dead. Ford is in jail for his murder. All the assets, corporate and personal, are frozen until the will is read.”
I swallowed, fighting the burn of her words. Those people meant nothing to me. Not anymore. Hardening my heart, I forced myself to say, “Then read the will and leave me out of it.”
“We can’t. Your father stipulated the will couldn’t be read without you.”
Her words lanced through me, cauterizing the wound as they went, leaving me numb and hollow.
My father was dead.
I hadn't seen him in fourteen years. I'd hated him far longer than that.
I wasn't alone in hating my father. Prentiss Sawyer was one of the most hated men in our patch of North Carolina. Hell, he was probably one of the most hated men in the country. Stalling, I said, “How? What happened?”
“Sterling found him in his office at Heartstone Manor. He was shot. He’d been dead a while.”
Sterling. My little sister. Half-sister. Most of my siblings were halves. Prentiss collected wives, but he was shit at keeping them. I resisted the urge to ask if Sterling was okay. Sterling wasn’t my problem. None of them were.
“Where?”
“His office,” Hope repeated more slowly, as if I were hard of hearing.
“No, where on his body was he shot?”
“His forehead.”
Execution style. A crime of passion I could see. An angry husband or a betrayed lover, sure. Not an assassination. And Ford was in jail for killing him? No way.
I had a lot of reasons to hate my brother, but there was no way he could have killed our father with a single shot to the forehead. Ford didn’t have it in him. He knew his way around a gun, all the Sawyer kids did, but that kind of cold-blooded murder? No.
How much had changed since I’d left?
I pushed Ford from my mind. Not your problem, I reminded myself. “The bastard changed his will after I left. Again.”
My father was famous for changing his will. He used that thing like a weapon, setting my siblings and me against one another in a constant play for dominance.
It wasn't enough that the Sawyers practically owned the town of Sawyers Bend, owned hundreds of millions of dollars in real estate and industry in North Carolina and the surrounding states.
Prentiss Sawyer wasn't happy unless the rest of us were dancing to his tune like puppets on strings. That will had been changed so many times the fees he paid to the family estate attorney had bought the man a second home.
I'd walked away from Sawyers Bend, turned my back on my family after they’d betrayed me in the worst way. My father’s will was not my problem.
“He kicked me out fourteen years ago,” I reminded her. “I have my own life now. Solve your own problems. “
A ghost of emotion flitted across Hope's face. Fear? Worry? Desperation? It was gone so fast I couldn’t tell.
She leaned forward a scant inch. “Griffen, you need to understand—everything is frozen. Everything. Personal funds. Business funds. Everything. People won’t get paid.
Businesses will go under. The town will go under.
You don’t have to stay. Please, just come home so Harvey can read the will.
As soon as it’s done you can leave, and you never have to see any of us again. ”
Fucking hell. My goddamned father. He always knew how to twist the knife.
He wanted me back in Sawyers Bend for some godforsaken reason, and he was the expert at getting his way, even from beyond the grave.
He knew I wouldn't come back if he asked. I didn't need the Sawyer fortune. I'd been raised to take the helm, groomed to follow in my father's footsteps, but I'd walked away. I’d made my own money. I didn’t need my father’s fortune, and I didn’t owe those people a fucking thing.
My family was poison, but the town of Sawyers Bend was a different story.
Sawyers Bend was filled with people just trying to live their lives. Good people. People dependent on the various Sawyer enterprises for their livelihood. Without the free flow of Sawyer cash, Sawyers Bend would grind to a halt, and it was the people of the town who would suffer first.
I wanted nothing to do with my family, but I wouldn't destroy the town.
“When is the reading of the will?”
“Tomorrow afternoon. Harvey’s office.”
“I'll be there. And then I’m leaving.”
I watched Hope walk out of my office, her back straight, posture perfect, the girl I'd known nowhere in sight.
Noon. I’d be back on the road to Atlanta by five, finally done with Sawyers Bend.
Nothing on this earth could convince me to stay a second longer.