AllFreeNovel
Share Us
PERRY
The fortress. The Lynx brothers’ home. It wasn’t actually a fortress but between the advanced security, the thick stone exterior, and the panic room, a riot could happen outside, and we’d be fine within.
I had one person to thank for that—my dad.
He paid for Greer to go to college. Paid for Peyton to become one of the toughest motherfuckers around. Paid for the home they lived in. All in the name of keeping me safe. To my dad, there was no person in the world more important than me. It was another reason I carried him in my heart still, and why I felt his loss some days like it just happened.
“Why didn’t he put in a bomb shelter?” I asked Peyton on the drive there Friday night. I didn’t have to pack clothes to stay with them. I had my own room full of whatever I’d need. It was the same for Peyton and Greer when they stayed with me at the penthouse. We were with each other all the time, more so Peyton and me.
“A bomb shelter?”
“Dad had you two put everything else in there. What happens if someone starts bombing the place?”
“That’s a bit excessive.”
“Yet the panic room isn’t?”
He shrugged.
There was probably a tunnel they didn’t tell me about. I wouldn’t put it past them.
It was because of my Uncle Jordan. More than the hit on me. My dad had a complicated relationship with his brother. They loved each other. It was obvious to whoever was in the room with them. The fear remained on my dad’s side, while my uncle reveled in it.
Jordan thought if my dad feared him, he could control him. He tried it. Once. My dad practically cut him off at the knees. He went behind Jordan’s back to his biggest supplier and stopped all shipments. Jordan never saw it coming. Afterward, he left my dad alone in that respect. They went back to their relationship, but it wasn’t quite the same.
Fast forward to a month before my dad’s stroke, when he and I were drinking gin in his home office on the penthouse level of the residential building he owned—the penthouse I now resided in. It wasn’t a surprise when he told me the company would be mine when he retired. The flash drive he handed me was. He explained the drive contained the names, addresses, phone numbers, and reason for doing business with Jordan. Every bank account Jordan had was listed. I even had the man’s blood type.
“A safeguard,” he’d told me. A copy of one he had in a hidden safe his brother didn’t know about. The copy I got went into the fortress. I knew better than to keep two copies in the same location. I wanted a safeguard too. Both Peyton and Greer knew about it. They knew what was on it. We didn’t have secrets from one another.
“I miss him,” I said as the fortress’s property came into view. He did this for me. My dad was a man with a million plans and plans to back those up. I thought it was where Peyton got it from.
“I know you do. I’m sorry he isn’t here any longer.”
Reaching over, I squeezed Peyton’s shoulder. “I still have you though.”
“You always will. And if not me, Greer.”
Tall, iron gates opened with a press of a button on the inside of Peyton’s Tahoe. The house wasn’t visible from the road. There were ten acres to wind through before we got to it. The rest of the land was on the sides and back.
The winter left the ground covered in a blanket of snow with a frozen layer of ice on top. The driveway was cleared. It was also heated. Another plan. In case they needed a fast getaway; the Lynx brothers didn’t want something like snow or ice to slow them down.
We crested a hill and there she was. Two stories of white stone with a high-pitched roof which housed an arsenal beneath it. The home was unassuming on purpose. It blended in with the other farmhouses out this way, roughly thirty minutes from West Dremest.
The deep navy-blue door swung open as we drove up to park around back in the six-car detached garage. Greer stood there, relaxed as usual. There were two garage bays attached but those were for emergencies. One housed a fast as hell all-wheel drive Subaru that had been heavily modified. The other bay was empty in case one of these insane fools had to come in hot, which they never had. Again, contingencies upon contingencies.
I got it. My uncle’s side of the family was dangerous as hell. None of us wanted to get involved with the mafia boss. We weren’t. At least not currently. If Peyton knew what was rattling around my head, he’d lock me in a room without a way to contact the outside world and not let me leave until I had a psych eval.
“Happy weekend,” Greer greeted as we came in the back door. He saw everything that went on here. Monitored each camera, ensured the tech was current and secure. I’d suggested he upload the flash drive to one of his servers for safekeeping. He said everything was hackable. No matter how much security was around it, if the right, extremely talented hacker went searching, they’d find it.
Peyton took the bottle of IPA from Greer’s hand and tipped it back for a long swallow as he toed off his shoes by the door. I did the same. Greer liked things neat around the house.
Greer’s eyebrows climbed to his hairline. “Is this about last night?”
“Not now.” Peyton shoved the bottle back at his brother and stomped farther into the house.
“What happened last night?” I asked once he was out of earshot.
He shook his head. “No clue, but he came home late, stumbling through your place. I thought he was drunk, which would be beyond the realm of normalcy. Now, I’m not so sure.”
