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“Well, have a glass of this fine whiskey your brother brought me. I think it’s about ten grand?” He eyes Isaac.
“Fifteen,” Isaac says, his chin firm.
“I’ll take a glass,” I reply and that’s the thing about the holidays. I feel my mother’s loss. I feel the loss of who I once was. I didn’t read my mother’s letter for a reason this morning. I didn’t want to contain myself. And I don’t obviously as I add, “I always like the taste of wasted money, just to make sure I don’t forget how smooth stupidity can go down.”
“Fucker,” Isaac snaps, and motions to the small table by the couches with a chess game setup. “Play. It’s better than our conversation.”
“Sure you want to do that?” our father asks. “He’s a genius.”
“I’m a national champion,” Isaac bites out. “And no idiot.”
Apparently, he is.
Most definitely he is.
My lips quirk and I sit down at the table. My father hands me the expensive whiskey, amusement in his eyes. I down it and set the glass aside. Isaac joins me and sets his smoke in an ashtray, his glass by his side. “You start us off,” he says.
No harm in starting things out. I do it. I make my move. He makes his and so it continues, and with every move, I back him into a corner. With every move, I end the game in my favor. When it’s done, he stands up and so do I, and he’s postured to beat my ass. I give him a deadpan stare. He glowers and then turns away, storming from the room.
My father steps in front of me. “You taught him something important today. What lesson, Eric?”
“Not to underestimate your opponent.”
“No. That’s not the lesson.”
He turns and walks away.
Chapter seventy-three
Eric
The minute I exit the building, Savage pushes off the building and falls into step with me. “I’m your Huckleberry, you badass got your back Huckleberry. Blake’s on live feed."
“Where’s Adam?”
“Oh fuck,” he growls. “You SEALs. You think no one is as good as you are. He’s still in Denver. He doesn’t trust anyone else to handle what you need handled there. You want me to call another one of our fin-wearing, belly-flopping guys to be back up right now, or do you think you can live with me?”
I arch a brow in his direction.
He arches a brow in mine.
“I simply wanted to know if Adam still had eyes on Isaac.”
“Oh that,” he says dryly. “Yes. He does and he has his lifejacket by his side with his little arm tubes, too, just in case he has to dive in and save someone.”
I surprise myself and laugh. “You’re a piece of work, Savage.”
“And I don’t even need fins to swim.” He drops that joke and turns serious. “Why are we walking?”
“I planned to clear my head and think, but you keep talking.”
“Right. What are we doing?”
“Apparently not clearing our heads and thinking. I’ve decided it’s time for me and my father to have a heart-to-heart.”
“I heard that shit. I guess my job is to make sure neither of you kill each other.”
I don’t comment. He doesn’t know my history with my father or he’d know how true that possibility is. Lord only knows, I wish the fuck it wasn’t what it is. I wish like hell I hadn’t been that man’s little bitch, at one point in my life, but I have been. For years, he knew how to work me, how to rattle me, and that’s what he wants now. To break me and set me up.
