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CHAPTER FIFTEEN
At least nineteen innocent people died in that explosion, including Jonathon Bradshaw, the family attorney I was on my way to meet. The “cause” was still under investigation, but Dad and I both knew the truth.
Liabilities. That was what he would have called those people under any other circumstance, like getting rid of evidence in a criminal investigation. I’d seen enoughaccidentalbuilding fires and perfectly timed burglaries to know how it worked. This time he denied having anything to do with it. This time he had to lie to everyone, even me. This time it was personal.
“Damn,” he’d said, shaking his head. “It will take months for them to sort through all that mess. I’m glad Jonathon didn’t have anything important in those offices.”
I wasn’t sure if it was a veiled threat or if he was just being his usual unsympathetic self. People died. His attorney died. And he was worried about paperwork. If I’d had to guess, it was the former. He had no way of knowing I knew about the trust, but he had to have the last word just in case I did.
As usual, I showed no emotion. I’d trained myself well. I’d been wearing this mask for so long, I almost didn’t recognize the man in the mirror when I took it off.
Knowing now that my strings were still tied, I went through the rest of the day with business as usual. I got my sandwich from the deli and spent the afternoon researching Dad’s new project. As expected, Mom had a cake from Ladurée waiting for me when we got home. Dad offered to take us out to dinner, but I told my parents I already had plans with Chandler. Not a total lie.
I had plans.
And Chandler had helped me make them.
An hour and forty-five minutes later, I was pulling onto Seven Lakes Road in East Hampton. My name got me through the gate because our family had a house out here too. Ours was just located on Billionaire’s Row.
One of Chandler’s guys, a hacker who specialized in breaking into the Vegas point spreads system, was able to tap into the security cameras at Tatum’s Hampton house and disable the feed. I still wore a black hoodie and parked down the road just in case.
In the darkness, landscape spotlights highlighted the colorful flower beds surrounding the front of the house, and wall sconces lit up the wraparound porch. There was a lifted Ford F-250 parked behind Tatum’s Benz in the circular driveway.
Brady.
Had to be.
Was she fucking him right now? Was he touching her? Tasting her?
The demons inside me stirred to life, and the way I saw it I had three choices: I could climb into the backseat of his truck, wait for him to come out and fuck his pretty boy face up the minute he got on 27-E. I could walk through the front door and fuck him up, then jack off—because face it, the thought of fucking him up made my dick hard—and come all over his bloody face while Tatum watched. Or I could wait until he left, then go inside and remind her who she belonged to.
I wasn’t trying to go to jail or make Tatum hate me any more than she thought she already did, so I walked around to the back of the house and waited. Thank God, I was a patient man because the minutes felt like hours.
The moonlight bounced off the ocean, and the crashing waves helped steady my raging heartbeat as I stared out over the hedges at the water. I took deep breaths and counted to myself.
Ten.
Nine.
Eight.
Seven.
“You should know that I have a gun.”
I turned around at the sound of her sweet voice. She tried to sound intimidating, but it was actually cute as fuck. I couldn’t imagine Tatum pulling a gun on anyone. She was too good for that. Unless it was a water gun. Then I imagined her with a water gun and me with mine. I’d soak her until her nipples poked through her clothes. Then I’d lick the water off every inch of her body.
A grin spread across my face as I looked up at her standing on the second-floor balcony. My face was shielded by my hood, but the way her mouth parted on a gasp when she saw me told me she knew exactly who I was. She stood there in a solid white, spaghetti-strapped dress that dipped in a low “V” between her breasts. Her hair was down, hanging over her shoulders. The soft amber glow formed a halo around her angelic body. If Shakespeare said Juliet was the sun, then Tatum was the whole fucking sky.
“Caspian?”
The thought of Brady seeing her like this made my blood boil.
“Are you alone?” I asked her.
The rumble of an engine coming to life answered my question. Tatum heard it too, because she made the mistake of looking over her shoulder toward the front of the house where Brady had just cranked his truck. Before she could look back at me, I was already making my way around the house to the front door.
I caught her bounding down the stairs as I opened the door and made my way inside. She stopped on the bottom step, one hand on the wooden rail, breathless and staring at me.
