I knew what he was saying. Maybe being the chaos agent of the Black family hadn’t served me well. I’d been offered a different track, and if I was smart enough to play my cards right, I could get on it for good.
But that depended on me knowing what I wanted, and everyone knew I didn’t want anything.
The problem was, they were wrong. Or they had been wrong for the last twenty-four hours, since those elevator doors had shut on Delaney Fisher.
I’d taken one extra day in Vegas to hush any potential police investigations or missing people requests and calm my guilt over condemning the father of a seven-year-old girl to the desert.
Okay, so maybe I stuck around to see if a certain green-eyed wife might turn back up at my suite.
No such luck.
I owed my lawyer and her a call, and in that order, but I hadn’t contacted either one about the annulment, settling instead for the occasional text just to make sure Laney was actually real.
I was still waiting for that unsettling sensation to dissipate. The one that said that I absolutely should not have let Laney Fisher out of my sight.
I opened my door. “That’s enough friendly advice, Mac Daddy. We both know that in there, you’re Niall’s man.”
Mac didn’t argue. The big man knew who signed his checks.
The carved front doors opened before I even knocked, and we were greeted by Jenkins, the butler Dad had hired with his first million to foster the illusion that Niall Black wasn’t, at his core, just a two-bit backroom gambler.
“Jenks, you old horn-dog.” I slung an arm around his neck and pretended to give him a noogie. “How are you? Still bird-dogging the ladies like it’s a competitive sport? Who’s the latest target—Sally the hot librarian?”
It was a little game we played. I said whatever obnoxious and mildly shocking thing came to mind, and Jenkins pretended I’d asked about the weather.
The butler didn’t so much as blink as he accepted my jacket to stow in the closet. “No, sir. The family is in the second drawing room awaiting your arrival. Shall I get your drink?”
I opened my mouth to accept my preferred vodka soda, but something stopped me. Sea glass eyes in the back of my mind. “Actually, I’ll take a tequila tonight. With a lime.”
Mac and I made our way through the grand foyer and down the herringbone-floored hall to the second drawing room—Dad’s favorite place to hold court.
He wasn’t supposed to be working after having a quadruple bypass two months ago. But we all knew he was doing his best to get back to form before his sons ruined his company, despite the announcement last month that he would be retiring and announcing a permanent heir to his position.
I still had my doubts about whether that would happen, but the man was an octogenarian. It was time. Even if Brendan hadjust torched the plan for succession, and now there was no one to take his place. Well, no one that fit the mold, anyway. And much as he wished otherwise, even Owen wasn’t seen as a serious contender. And Shea was still practically an adolescent.
The drawing room was already full when I walked in. Dad sat in his favorite leather chair by a fire that was blazing despite it being almost July. My stepmother, Violeta, and Shea sat on the sofa next to him, long-necked and elegant like two beautiful cranes. Liza was there too, roosting on his otherwise with her son Liam—my best friend and one of the company’s lead counsel.
He looked exhausted. No surprise there. Brendan’s little stunt had probably had legal up all week looking for ways out of his dual messes: the one he’d made in the woods and the other with the company. Based on the bloodthirsty call I’d received three days ago, it sounded more like Brendan had tracked down the people who had kidnapped his woman and conducted an old-fashioned execution.
Christ. That was my domain. They’d get it deemed self-defense, if they hadn’t already. But it was still a bloodthirsty way to protect his girl.
Owen was pacing by the windows, which meant he was either working himself into a rage or trying to fend one off. So, status quo, since Owen was a chip off the old block, a.k.a. a rage-a-holic asshole like the man who sired him.
Only Brendan was missing. We had the bomb he’d dropped instead.
“Look who finally decided to grace us with his presence.” Shea shoved her phone into her purse and slouched onto the couch in a very short skirt, like she was in the VIP section at a nightclub and not her father’s living room. She crossed one long leg over another and grinned. “Have fun babysitting, Mac?”
Behind me, Mac had taken his usual place near the door. “No better than watching you, Ms. Black.”
Their tête-à-tête was typical. Mac and Shea had a similar routine to me and Jenkins, although he was willing to give Shea a little more of what she dealt, and everyone here was more than happy for him to give Shea a bit of her own medicine.
Shea’s eyes narrowed. Barely twenty-two, she hated being called Ms. Black. Said it made her sound like “one of Daddy’s country club whores.” “You know my name. And I don’t need a babysitter?—”
“The incident in Monaco says otherwise.”
Shea’s porcelain features turned nearly the color of her dark red hair. “That wasone time.”
“It was three.” Mac examined his nails. “I counted.”