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I close my eyes, and my heart starts to race against my rib cage. This is it. This is where I have to tell him that our parents are gone. I hadn’t really thought of this until now. I think I’ve been in shock.
I haven’t really accepted the fact that they’re gone, but beyond that, I haven’t thought about what that means for my siblings other than my immediate questions about their finances and futures.
Money is all that really matters, right? Isn’t that what they taught us, anyway? Money trumps family. It trumps everything to them. It means more than anything in the world.
“What?” I ask.
“Your husband,” he grinds out. “He has us on house arrest. I don’t know what the fuck is going on, but I woke up to a house of men dressed in suits who looked just like him. So I can only assume it’s your bastard husband and he’s got us under lock and key for a fucking reason.”
He does.
But I don’t tell him that.
I don’t say that not only because they don’t need to know, and I don’t even understand all the reasons, but also because I’m being watched very closely right now. Junior’s easy-breezy gaze has sharpened, and he is, without a doubt, very much related to Coleman in this moment. I can see it in the way everything is working behind his eyes.
“I don’t know,” I whisper.
“Bullshit,” he snaps. “This was the endgame, wasn’t it?”
“What?” I ask.
Bryson growls, then he whispers his next words, and I begin to breathe heavily, unsure of what to say or do. “Taking the hotel, the casino, the whole thing. It was never about just getting you in exchange for the debt. It was about having it all. The whole fucking thing, our entire legacy. It’s his now. And they are laughing at us. The entire Hamilton family has made a laughingstock of the Simon family, and you’re going to reap all the benefits, leaving us high and goddamn dry. You are such a cunt, Claire. Always have been, always will be.”
The call ends, and I am stuck staring at Junior, wondering what the fuck just happened.
Junior chuckles and shakes his head a couple of times from side to side. “Paperwork must have been signed and posted.”
I blink.
ChapterThirty
CLAIRE
“What are you saying?”I ask as I drop the phone to my side. “What just happened, and why is my brother so angry with me?”
Junior watches me for a long moment, and I think he’s going to enlighten me, but he doesn’t. He just smirks at me before he rises to his feet and walks to the kitchen. I don’t move as my gaze follows every move he makes.
He opens the fridge, takes a bottle of water out before he closes it behind him, twists the top off, throws it to the side, then lifts the bottle to his lips and takes a long drink. I stay seated in the chair in the living room, watching him.
Junior’s gaze finds mine and holds it for a long moment, then he clears his throat before he walks over to the island counter that separates the kitchen from the living room.
“I’m saying that your family had a deal with my brother, and they thought they were going to take over the Hamilton empire, and it is an empire. Your father didn’t realize, though, that only a Hamilton will ever have control of the family. No outsider will ever come in and have any say in what we do. They’ll never have any fucking power, and he was a goddamn fool to think he would.”
Bringing my knees closer to my chest, I place my feet on the cushion of the couch and wrap my arms around my shins as I rest my chin against my knees, my brows snapping together in confusion.
“Why are you telling me all of this?” I ask.
Junior shrugs a shoulder. “I’m not telling you any secret. Sure, we have secrets, but that’s not what this is. This is just a fact. Your parents tried to betray the family. My brother did the same. Neither of them made it to live another day, which is a risk they were somehow willing to take.”
“For money,” I whisper.
“And power. Control and power.”
“My brothers and sister?” I ask.
He shrugs a shoulder. “They knew more than they let on. That much is clear now.”
“Now?”
