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I walked with him.
“Alix giving you any trouble?”
“No. I’m the one giving him trouble.”
“Well, don’t kill him. Executioners are hard to come by.”
I suddenly felt sick. Men volunteered to do the dirty work because it wasn’t the kind of job you could simply assign. You had to possess a special kind of evil to be able to stomach that kind of violence.
Fender asked me about production and our status with the shipment to Spain. “Were you able to negotiate a deal?”
“I did. But it’s considerably more expensive to do it this way, which means we’ll need to raise our prices.”
“Done.”
“But this will make it much riskier. Not sure if it makes sense to pursue it.”
Fender stopped and turned on me. “It’ll increase our revenue by fifty percent. Tell me, how does that not make sense?”
I stared at my brother’s hard face, seeing a man so focused on the past and the future at the same time. He turned to money as the answer to all his problems, the cure to his nightmares. But it was driving him mad. “I think continuing an existing successful business takes precedence over higher profits. Fender, you’re already wealthier than all other wealthy men—combined. What is it gonna take for you to be satisfied?”
He stared at me a bit longer before he continued forward.
I joined him.
He looked ahead as if I hadn’t asked a question at all. “I will never be satisfied. Don’t ask a question when you already know the answer.” He reached the cabin and stepped inside. His meal was already on the table, along with a decanter of scotch and a glass. Everyone knew of his visit to the camp that evening, so they were all prepared.
Fender fell onto the couch and immediately started to eat.
I stayed by the door. “Goodnight.” I turned to leave.
“No. I have something to say to you.”
With my hand on the door, I stared at his back. His muscles shifted and moved as he ate his dinner, staring at the opposite wall. I could see all the good and all the bad instantaneously, and I knew my brother wasn’t just the wealthiest man I’d ever known but also the stubbornest. I released the door and joined him on the couch.
Fender took a drink of scotch before he looked at me. He held my stare for a long time, processing the words in his head before he spoke them aloud. “Raven is free to leave the camp.”
I heard what he said because there could be no confusion at all, but I continued my blank stare because his words entered my ears but not my brain. The stubbornest man in the world had changed his mind.
“Next time you return to Paris, take her with you. And leave her there.” As if he had finished saying everything he wanted to say on the matter, he dropped his chin and looked at his plate so he could continue eating his steak and potatoes. After a long journey on the road, he always wanted a good meal on his table.
For a minute, I was speechless. I’d begged for her release many times, and every request was denied. I didn’t want her to be here a moment longer, to wake up in the middle of the night and stare at the door like someone was about to break through it to take her. She was so joyful in Paris, and that was what I wanted for her every day. “Thank you.” It didn’t matter why he’d changed his mind. I got what I wanted, and I was grateful.
“I didn’t do it for you.” He finished chewing before he set down his fork and grabbed a drink. He tilted his head back and poured a good amount into his mouth before he set down the glass once again. “I did it for Melanie.”
“Then I guess you two made up.” Last time I saw them together, she’d slapped him across the face before she’d stormed into the house.
“I asked her to marry me.”
With a non-blinking stare, I looked at my brother, never expecting him to say something like that. Time had passed strangely for the last few months, but that was all it had been…a few months. A woman he hardly knew had stolen his affection, and he was so obsessively blinded by her beauty that he became irrational and impulsive. It wasn’t like him at all. Sometimes his greed made him do stupid things, but a woman had never made him do stupid things.
“She said yes.” He stopped eating his dinner and rubbed his hands together, his eyes a little hazy like he was replaying the moment in his head. “But only if I let Raven go. She said she couldn’t marry the man who kept her sister as a prisoner. I didn’t have a choice, so I agreed.”
