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“I see what you did there,” she said flatly.
I held my phone up a bit. “Duty calls.”
She took a bite of steak off her fork. “Enjoy.”
I stood to my feet, abandoning my meal as I walked toward the opposing end of the balcony. I leaned against the railing as the waves kicked up, crashing against the stilts my cabana sat upon. The wind wrapped around me, signaling an oncoming storm that would surely chase us inside sooner rather than later. And as I opened the email that had interrupted my fantastic meal, my jaw almost hit the floor.
I quickly turned my back to Eden so that she didn’t read my face as I studied the pictures my research team had sent me.
No fucking way.
Picture after picture of her father filtered through to my phone. There were dozens of them, and the dates on the pictures would have put him around college-age. There were men in trench coats and black suits. They all wore sunglasses, even in the dead of night. There were pictures of blacked-out SUVs with all sorts of license plates that would surely turn up fake if I had my team trace them.
Holy fucking hell, none of this shit was good.
“Anything juicy?” Eden asked.
I calmly closed my phone and slid it back into my pocket. “Just another probable client. My research team is sending me preliminary information to look over.”
She sipped her drink. “Are you sure about that?”
I didn’t hesitate. “What do I need to do to get some more lemonade in my drink?”
“Pick up your glass and go inside.”
I walked back over and picked up my plate of food. “Such a hard crowd to please around here.”
“Hey, you want to be a generally decent human being? I may consider refilling your glass.”
I stabbed a piece of shrimp with my fork. “Sounds like a life of boredom. I’ll stick to the excitement.”
“Then, you can get your own drinks.”
To say I was thankful that she picked her shit up and went inside was a god damn understatement. I heard her clinking around in the kitchen before her footfalls fell away from me, and it wasn’t until after I had confirmed that she was nowhere to be found that I ripped my cell phone back out. I opened that email and gave those pictures one last look-through before I sent a quick email back to the head of the research team fielding this shitshow.
Don’t you dare contact me again until you’ve got the whole story. Understood? When you contact me next, which better be soon, I want it all. I want the full gamut of what the fuck is going on and what the hell this has to do with what happened at my banquet. Got it?
D. Drake
I tossed my phone between my legs and raked my hands down my face. I knew that I had told my research team to dig up everything they could, but I couldn’t stand it a second longer. I needed answers. My company deserved answers. And to be honest, Eden deserved answers as well. Something was amiss, and it certainly wasn’t good. I didn’t like the fact that Thaddius sat on my board of investors. I didn’t like the fact that one of the most prominent families in my company had gotten caught up in all this shit. I needed to know why the hell his daughter falsely accused a boy of molesting her at my banquet. I needed to know if it had anything to do with the falling out between Eden’s father and the patriarch of the Beauregard family.
And I needed to know before the next investors meeting.
Just in case I had to find a new investor for my fucking board.
“What the hell is going on?” I groaned to myself.
After racking my brain for answers that I knew would never come, I cleaned up my mess. The leftovers that sat out on the counter caused me to roll my eyes, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to leave food sitting out overnight. I piled the dishes into the sink and placed the leftovers into Tupperware containers. It gave me time to settle my mind so that I had a chance at getting a full night’s rest.
But, as I slid the last container into the fridge, I found myself tossing around a very important question. One that threatened to crumble everything that I had worked so hard for in my life.
Why do I care so fucking much about Eden’s family?
