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One year later…
Chandler
“If Leo keeps this shit up, we’re going to need another house,” Lincoln said, his voice sounding loud over the speakerphone in my home office.
He wasn’t lying. We were on the phone for our weekly check-in and I’d been jotting notes down in a spiral notebook for twenty minutes.
Since the whole Crimson Sin website takedown, Leo went on a rampage, scouting the dark web for anything he could find. That fucker sniffed out human traffickers quicker than a gold digger sniffed out millionaires. Anniston always begged to help him, but I didn’t want her anywhere near that horny motherfucker. Besides, she was busy with more important things, royal things. Things I knew nothing about, but was quickly having to learn.
Every time Leo cracked one down, we ended up with a house full of girls. Anniston always insisted on being at the house when we dropped them off. She was waiting with that gorgeous fucking smile, an armful of books, and all the things to make them feel like princesses, too. We kept the girls at the safehouses until their bodies and minds were no longer broken. Some took longer than others, even with the counseling we offered.
Linc and Lyric moved to Tennessee to help full-time on one condition—that the houses be called Hallowed Ground. “Evil never trespasses on hallowed ground,” he’d said. I let him have his way because it was better to shut him up than to piss him off. If you asked me, it was the piercing. Anybody with a piece of metal rammed through the tip of their dick was bound to be moody.
After our third house, we were officially a non-profit organization. Maybe there was some light in our dark souls after all.
“Hey, Linc, I’ll call you back,” I told him when my father’s face flashed across the television hanging on the wall.
I pulled my feet from the top of my desk and sat up straight in my chair. Where the fuck was the remote? I kept the TV on to check the scores when I worked from home, but I left the volume muted. The sound was a distraction. I had enough distractions at knowing Anniston was walking around the apartment somewhere, probably barefoot and wearing one of those dresses, sipping a glass of wine, her nipples peeking through the fabric because she never wore a bra. Fuck. The image made me groan.
I opened the top drawer and found the remote, turning up the volume just in time to hear the news anchor say, “Millionaire Pierce Carmichael was found dead in his Manhattan home this morning. The real estate mogul hanged himself in an apparent suicide, according to a statement from NYPD. A note addressed to his adoptive son, Chandler Carmichael, was found on the scene. Earlier this year, Carmichael resigned as CEO of Carmichael Enterprises and later filed bankruptcy, losing several of his properties, but the reason for the suicide is still unknown.”
I powered off the television just as my cell phone rang. “I heard,” I said instead of the typical hello I usually greeted my attorney with when he called.
“He left you a note.”
“I heard that, too.”
“He also left you the house.”
“I don’t want it.” I left that house when I was eighteen years old, vowing to never step foot through those doors again. “What about my mother?” I used that term very loosely.
“She’s taken care of. And I assumed you’d let her stay in the house.”
“Good thing you aren’t a gambler, Jim. You suck at predictions.” I tapped my pencil on my notebook while I paused to think. “Search my family’s financial records and find a maid. I don’t have a name, but she would’ve worked for my father about twenty-seven years ago. Blonde hair. Green eyes.” Hearing those words leave my lips twisted my stomach. That was the first time I’d ever asked anyone to find my mother.
“Okay….” He dragged the word out as if waiting for me to elaborate.
“Kick my mother out and give the house to that maid.”
“Chandler, you can’t just—”
End call.
I tossed my cell phone on my desk. “Yeah.” I blew out a breath. “I can.” I leaned my head back and stared at the ceiling.
He was gone.
My father was dead.
The reason for the suicide is still unknown.
I knew.
Six months ago, he begged me to stop. Stop building. Stop buying. Stop growing.
The fifteen-year-old boy who stood in front of him begging him to take me golfing on Sundays so I wouldn’t have to stay in that house, the one who tried telling him what was happening and got ignored, who was lied to his whole life and treated like he didn’t matter, looked him in the eye, handed him a rope, and told him to go fuck himself.
I did it. I was the bomb that dropped in and imploded everything from the inside.
