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AXEL
TWO MONTHS LATER
“Hey man. Can somebody send for coffee?” Damian squinted as he entered the conference room. It was nine a.m., which was not early for us, but he looked like he’d been freshly ejected from bed.
“Wow. What happened to you?” Trace smirked as he sized up Damian, setting his laptop on the glass-topped table.
“Let me guess. Up all night hacking the SEC to find out the dirt they’ve got on us,” I added, settling into my favorite oversized leather seat. Damian simply scowled at us in return.
Francis stepped into the room, looking over at Damian. “Should I have Jessa join us?”
“No,” Damian snapped. “She doesn’t need to know everything.”
“Well, she needs to know some things,” I said. She’d come on board recently to help offload some of the tasks that Francis accumulated between the three of us.
“Francis, can you send for coffee? I need the blackest shit you can find,” Damian said.
“Of course. Espresso?”
“Mmm.” Trace laced his fingers together. “I’d probably work better if I had espresso.”
“Guys, why don’t we have this shit waiting for us when we get here?” I asked. “We’ve owned this business for how many years? And we still spend the first ten minutes figuring out what drinks we want. Can we get with the program?”
“Francis, make a note—espresso every day,” Trace said, lifting a finger.
“Got it. I’ll be back ASAP.” He grimaced in the direction of Damian and rushed out of the conference room. When it was just the three of us, Damian sighed again, letting his head drop into his hands.
“Is this a hangover or a code-over?” I asked.
“Hangover.” Damian squeezed his eyes shut. “And honestly, I don’t wanna talk about it.”
“Okay.” I held my palms up defensively. “Just trying to help get to the bottom of your drunken rampage. After all, you two spent a lot of time worrying about my hangovers back in the day. It’s only fair I probe into yours.”
Damian scowled at me.
“Anything to do with yournew confidential secretary?” Trace asked, lifting a brow. “Who came in late this morning, I believe.”
Damian’s scowl deepened, which looked a lot likeyesto me.
“Ooh, I think you might have hit the mark,” I murmured to Trace. We shared a brotherly smile. The ribbing was good. It made things normal, when they were still anything but. The investigation continued, but it was impossibly slow-moving. We’d made our peace with it—as much as we could, at least, with prison sentences hanging over our heads.
But things were stressful still. Moments like these, where we just felt like brothers again—this was the shit that helped.
Living in premarital bliss with Cora in the Hamptons helped a fucking lot too.
“Listen, are we gonna talk about the agenda?” Damian snapped.
“God, I’ve never seen youthisfeisty,” I said. “I definitely want to probe further.”
Trace, ever the mediator, tapped at his laptop. “All right, brothers. Let’s get down to business and save the probing for the general comments at the end.”
“Finally,” Damian muttered.
Trace led the meeting, as he did every Monday, about the state of our affairs. Now that I was the majority shareholder of Margulis Realty, we focused a lot on what our strategy there would look like. I hadn’t done anything drastic over there yet. I merely loved attending board meetings and watching the displeasure settle across Allan and Eli’s faces as I stroked Zero’s head and stared at them both. Seeing those assholes so unsettled with my owning their business and reaping the profits was enough revenge for now.
But the main focus of this meeting was the future. Cora’s tell-all letter had been the best damage control we could have mustered. Even though the Princess of Wall Street had fallen from grace within her royal family, the woman still held a lot of clout in her elite circles. Her confession had blunted the losses we would have incurred without her exposé.
So we were limping along. Slower than before—but still on two feet.
