I had no doubt.
Bryant was the one who taught me only to land the first punch if you were sure it would knock the opponent out for good, otherwise you risked retribution. Our father practically had a whole fucking rule book written around the concept of revenge and I knew he planned to throw the whole fucking thing at me.
“I can arrange a meeting with Bryant anytime,” Santo offered. “I just need something tangible to give him, or he’ll smell bullshit a mile off.”
We fell silent, each of us knowing the entire crux of our patriarchal takedown hinged on that one thing.
And then, in the silence, came a tentative knock at the door.
Before I could tell whomever it was to fuck off, Beckett Fairchild peeked his head around the door. “Hello?”
“We’re having a private conference, Beckett,” I barked. “Wait your damn turn. I said I would make time for you.”
Beckett glowered at me, an expression I’d never seen on his face that was surprisingly effective. “No, I’m afraid I have to speak to you now, Tiernan.”
He closed the door behind himself and confidently stroke into the center of two Morelli men and a well-known mafioso as if his skin was made of titanium armor. I watched with some amusement as he braced his hands against my desk to lean over to me.
“I won’t apologize for eavesdropping, because I have exactly what you need.”
“I won’t apologize for cutting out your tongue so you can’t pass on anything you so innocently overheard,” I responded with a wolfish smile as I pulled a knife from the top drawer of my desk and set it on the table between us.
Beckett didn’t even glance at the weapon, his vivid green eyes hooked through mine. “There’s no need for that. If anyone is going to cut out my tongue, it will probably be your father after I go with Santo to sell him information about Colombe Energy Investments.”
His words ignited a nuclear silence, the air ballooning with pressure.
“And why the fuck would you do that?” The words rumbled through my chest as I stood and flattened my own hands on the desk, leaning over it to snarl in Beckett’s face and match his pose.
There was something wrong about this, something that made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.
“I have my reasons,” Beckett replied, not backing down in the face of my ire.
“If you want to help us so badly, you’ll share them.”
He stared at me with such intensity, his eyes started to redden from the strain. “Lane was my best friend, my brother by choice. I promised I would look after Brandon and Bianca, and I failed. This is my way of making it right.”
I didn’t believe him for a single second and based on Carter’s scoff, he didn’t either.
But… “You understand that going with Santo very well might result in Bryant sensing a trap and putting a bullet in your fucking head?”
I waited for him to shy away from the stark truth, but Beckett just rolled his shoulders back and fixed me with that jade green gaze. “You spoke of the people you love as reason not to kill your father. Well, I have my own loved ones and I’m willing to do this for them.”
Our stand-off was cut short by the vibration of my cellphone and the simultaneous metallic ring of the landline going off throughout the house.
Walcott must have picked up the house phone, but I let mine ring for a long moment while I stared down Beckett Fairchild, searching for cracks in his conviction.
I found none.
Instead, he seemed to grow even larger, swollen with conviction.
Finally, I broke eye contact and answered my cell without looking at the screen.
“Hello?”
A moment later, Walcott burst through the office door, his face beneath the molten scarring white as snow.
“Tiernan,” my head of security at the casino said in a voice trembling with anger. “Someone set off a bomb at Inequity. No one was there because it’s Christmas, but the casino… it’s fucking gone.”
I stared across the room over Beckett’s shoulder at Walcott as the cold fury crept through my veins like ice, freezing my resolve in place, clarifying my mind.
“Well,” I said to Carter. “It seems Bryant landed his first punch. He took out my club in New York.”
A ripple of shock ran through the room. We all knew Bryant was capable of disgusting deeds, but he’d never taken it quite so far against his own family.
“Okay, Beckett,” I said the cold knife of my anger cutting a smirk into my face. “Welcome to the fucking club. I don’t give a shit anymore, if you can help us take down that fucker, you’re in.”
22
TIERNAN
Of course, Bryant was too much of a suspicious asshole to meet anywhere outside of his control, so the exchange was scheduled to take place two days after Christmas at the Morelli Mansion.
A place I was essentially banned from.
Happily, I had a very loving, alcoholic mother who was all too willing to sneak her favorite son into the building from the separate entrance to her wing of the house. It had its own security system, only the video monitors played in the central security room at the heart of the house and if the guards were too busy watching for the arrival of Santo and Beckett, I’d be able to slip inside without any fanfare.
There was no fucking way I was going to miss the takedown of Bryant Morelli. It was glaringly and darkly funny to me thinking back to when I’d believed Bianca was my enemy when all along it had so clearly been my own father who hated me and hunted my joy down at every single fucking turn my life took.
Now, he’d taken Inequity from me.
An underground club and casino that had taken me a decade to make into what it was today, a well-known, elite’s haven for sin and indulgence. It produced enough revenue in one month to keep an entire small town afloat for a year.
Bryant thought it would be a devastating loss, a crippling financial setback. He’d always assumed because of my dyslexia that I was all brawn and no brain, but whatever I lacked in reading ability was more than made up for by my talent with numbers and a natural business acumen I’d probably learned from the prick himself.
Inequity was the obvious diamond in my crown, but I had many other ventures hidden in the shadows that Bryant was none the wiser to. Thanks in large part to those and Henrik’s investments, I’d have Inequity up and running in a new location before the year was out.
Bryant had landed a punch, but it hadn’t knocked me out. It had only stirred up a lifelong history of bitterness and wrath that tangled inside me like a payload I was ready to catapult at my father.
To my shock, it was Lucian who waited in the SUV idling in the driveway that morning while I said goodbye to my Belcantes. I crouched before Brandon so I could accept his hug on his level and Picasso took the opportunity to jump onto his hind legs to lick my face. Brando dissolved into laughter, encouraging his dog to attack me with kisses.
It was just the kind of silliness I hadn’t had in my life for decades and just the kind of silliness I found my heart warming over. It almost hurt, the frozen organ de-thawing after so many years of arctic existence.
Bianca watched us with her pouty lower lip caught between her teeth, her hands wringing behind her back. There was anxiety in every inch of her, but when I caught her eye as I rose she smiled valiantly.