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I nodded. “That’s fine. You’re welcome to ask me questions at any time. Anyway.”
He tilted his head to one side. “Did you have any for me?”
“I have one, and you don’t have to answer it, if you don’t want.”
Sylvester’s smile twitched with a brief frown. “Go on.”
I tapped the table in thought. “What’s your deal with Apollo? Why are the rest of you at war with him?”
“Did he not tell you that himself? Was it not in the book? I suppose it wasn’t...”
“You read it?”
“Of course I did. We had a book club.”
I thought of the four Brock brothers sitting in a little circle with the book I’d ghostwritten, and it brought a smile to my face.
Sylvester caught it and smiled back. “Suffice to say, it was an unenjoyable experience, so I don’t think we’ll be having a second session. Don’t worry, we all agreed that whoever wrote it was clearly some kind of genius.”
I smirked. “Do your brothers know it was me? Winston, Jude, Forest?”
He nodded. “Don’t worry, they won’t come after you. They’re all busy with their respective wives and happy families.”
The way he said it was slightly bitter. I raised an eyebrow. “Doyouwant a wife, Sylvester?”
“Pfft. No. But as the last single brother I get to be snarky about how everyone else is married apart from me. Isn’t that the way?”
“As far as I know, Apollo’s single. Maybe you two will rekindle a bromance of some kind. Wingman for each other.”
Sylvester scrunched up his face. “Unlikely. Oh, yeah, I was telling you about the Brock drama.”
I nodded, keen to have some insight into the relations between my two best-paying clients.
“Once upon a time, all five of us were thick as thieves. We met when we were summoned to Emory’s huge and villainous mansion. There, he taught us his ways of business and life. We were so horrified by his personal ethics that we – the five of us – agreed we’d accept the inheritance when it came our way, and we’d use it to undo some of Emory’s wrongs. You know, worker exploitation, environmental damage, weird and probably illegal experiments, etcetera.”
“Yikes.” That hadn’t come up in my meetings with Apollo, that was for sure.
“Yikes is correct. You might say,jinkies!” Sylvester gestured to my face.
I realized he was meaning my glasses. “You like?” I put my hands under my face in a sarcastic pose.
He laughed. “They suit you. You don’t really look like Velma, either. Too much black. Goth Velma.”
I was annoyingly flattered by his comment. Of theScooby Doogang, of course most young girls wanted to be Daphne. I’d always admired Velma.
“Anyway...” Sylvester continued. “All five of us went our separate ways for the years until Emory died. RIP the crazy old man. Apollo seemed to still be on board with our plan to use our powers for good, right up until just after that initial press conference when he decided Emory’s ways of working were better for business, that business and makingmoremoney were his number one priorities, and that we were all softhearted delusional fools. He didn’t seem to understand how saying all of that to us would make us enemies...”
He laughed ruefully. “We each tried to talk him around, but he wasn’t seeing sense. Then, when we declared we couldn’t ally ourselves with him if he continued his ways, he got angry.Very, veryangry. Swore his revenge on all of us. Then spent the next two decades subtly branching his company out into the areas ours were supposed to cover, so he was competing with us. Entertainment, medical science, technology... except ‘charity’, I suppose, as there’s not really a competition there.”
“That seems so childish, the way you say it.”
“It felt childish. I think he really thought he could just go against everything we stood for and we’d just... let him, and still accept him in our circle. Then, when we started funding things that actively stood against him, he vowed total revenge on us... personally. Started getting involved with my brothers’ partners, family, sending in spies and so on.”
“Wow.”
“I’m the last one standing who hasn’t been personally targeted by him. Which means, of course, I’m next. When I found out you were his ghostwriter, I did wonder...”
An odd look passed over Sylvester’s expression, and I realized what he was considering. That Apollo had hired me because of my connection to Sylvester, to somehow get back at him. But I didn’t feel that was the case, somehow. “I don’t think it’s breaking my NDA to say that... he’s never asked about the relationship between you and me. Maybe he doesn’t even know.”
