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“Jesus Christ, Landry,” Rowena sighed. “Where do you come up with this shit?”
“What? It could happen?”
“The ticket and the storm maybe, but a shootout?” I could see her shaking her head in that maternal way that she does. “Embezzlement is blue-collar crime, Landry. He would probably just give himself up.”
“While boring, you’re probably right,” I reluctantly conceded.
Rowena let out a dramatic sigh, as if I was too much to deal with. “Even though your reading was affected by all those damn margaritas-”
“Which were delicious, by the way.”
“They really were,” she quickly agreed. “Anyways, I saw a…shadow of sorts.”
I sat up straighter in my chair. “A shadow?” Shadows weren’t good. I mean, they weren’t always sinister in their presence, but most angels had better things to do than save adults from themselves.
“Just be careful,” she advised. “It could be you making a new friend, it could be you being followed, or it could be you hiding from someone.”
“I hide from Bryant on a daily basis,” I reminded her.
“Just pay attention to your surroundings while you’re on this job,” she sighed like a fed-up parent.
“That’s all you can give me?” I complained.
“The very reason why we shouldn’t be getting drunk while doing a reading,” she harrumphed.
“But they really were damn good margaritas,” I argued.
I mean, they’d been really, really, really good margaritas.
Chapter 2
Rush~
While Crawford Industries didn’t need to purchase Grandland Hotels, we were doing it as a favor to Preston. Now, normally, we didn’t make business decisions based on emotional reasons, but every now and again, my younger brother’s human side came out, and there was very little that I wouldn’t do for him.
Crawford Industries was my brainchild, and I had worked my entire life to make it the powerhouse that it was today. Foregoing marriage and children to dedicate all my time to growing this company wasn’t anything that I regretted, either. I thrived on challenges and making money. I got high off business deals and crushing the competition. I was at my best when I was sitting behind my desk, and I was at my happiest when adding another win to my already impressive portfolio.
At two years younger than me, it’d been a no-brainer to bring my brother onboard. While my father, Cooper Crawford, was a retired CIA agent, and my mother, Lacey Crawford, was a law professor, neither Preston nor I had wanted to follow in their footsteps. While both their careers couldn’t be considered boring by any means, I’d had very little interest in being a public servant. My strength had been in numbers and business, and I had done my best to capitalize on those two characteristics.
As for Preston, my long work hours had enabled him to be able to have it all. While I had sacrificed sleep, sanity, and personal connections to create my billion-dollar empire, Preston had found time to get married and have kids, something that I was very grateful for. Preston and Kitty had three children, and I adored each one of those damn kids. Thomas, Lily, and Rodrick were the perfect substitute children in my life, and I enjoyed spoiling the shit out of them.
So, I was a thirty-eight-year-old billionaire, and I had the entire world at my fingertips. As CEO of Crawford Industries, there was very little that I couldn’t buy in life. I had more than I would ever need, and if I never had kids of my own, then I was perfectly fine with leaving everything to Thomas, Lily, and Rodrick, depending on where their dreams took them.
Pulling out my phone to send Preston a text, I was on my way to the flagship of Grandland Hotels. While I normally liked to drive myself, sometimes I had so much work to catch up on that I needed a driver. I was always working, and I wasn’t too important not to work from the backseat of my town car. I worked wherever I could, and if that meant jotting notes down on a café napkin, then that’s what I did. I lived and breathed for Crawford Industries, and I couldn’t see that changing any time soon.
Right now, I was headed to Grandland’s flagship hotel to meet with Bryant Stanton from Jacobi Auditing. While they’d be auditing the main offices of Grandland Hotels, I had insisted on a tour of the hotel, so that the auditors would have a reference when going through their financial records. Luckily, all Grandland Hotels were laid out with the same floor plans, so we only needed to tour one hotel to get the full picture.
Me:Heading 2 the hotel now
Preston:OK. I’ll meet u at the offices when ur done there
Crawford Industries had their fingers in many different capitalistic ventures. We were about making money, then using that money to make more. So, real estate was included on that list, along with everything else that you could think of. I wasn’t a billionaire because I had all my apples cooked in one pie. I had apples, oranges, bananas, grapes, apricots, and every other fruit on the planet making money for me. I had a few vegetables thrown in there, too.
So, while real estate and takeovers weren’t anything new to Crawford Industries, we never would have looked at Grandland Hotels if Preston hadn’t asked for the favor. He’d gone to college with Davis Courtney, the current CEO and owner of Grandland Hotels, and they’d kept in touch over the years enough for him to have called Preston for a bailout when things had gotten bad.
Again, normally, Crawford Industries didn’t make business decisions based on emotion. Nevertheless, for whatever reason, this had been important enough to Preston for him to approach me about buying Grandland Hotels out, and since Preston didn’t make a habit of asking me for favors, I had granted this one because he was my baby brother and a good dude.
However, baby brother or not, my love for him didn’t turn me into a stupid businessman. After agreeing to help out, I had insisted on an independent audit of all their finances, dating back five years, not caring how excessive that seemed.
