Five Brothers
: Chapter 30

“Alittle higher,” I tell Santos.

He grunts, exhaling, “’Kay.”

We lift the beam, the sun beating down as we balance high on the scaffold and I drill a bolt through the wood. The handheld tool stutters, signaling the bolt is tightened.

“Got it?” he asks.

“Yep.”

He releases the beam, taking out a bandanna and wiping down his face. People work below, the walls rising quickly while Dallas pulls up with a truckload of Sheetrock.

“Five extra bedrooms, huh?” Santos laughs. “You making plans?”

“Just making room for the unexpected.”

“Yeah, that’s usually how babies happen.”

He laughs again, and I let him. The new addition onto the house will fill up faster than we know, and I want it to be ready. Iron will get out of prison, and I don’t want the lack of space to be an excuse for Army to leave. Or Dallas or Trace. Liv will always have her room here, but at least I can count on that one not to give me any surprise nieces or nephews until she’s absolutely ready.

“You know,” Santos tells me, “my wife’s sister does interior painting. When it’s time to drywall and decorate, I could have her stop by to meet you.”

I rotate the wrench, tightening the bolt.

“She’s pretty. And a good girl.”

I stare at the beam.

“It wouldn’t be a date,” he assures me. “Just one night y’all happen to work late and then you take it from there. I’m sure you remember how.”

I shift my gaze up, seeing him grin. I think everyone in the Bay is under some impression that I’m fun now because I’m speaking more and getting air once in a while. I even fucking smiled at a kid yesterday. He looked like I was about to eat him.

Santos laughs when I don’t play along, and we move on to the next beam.

But just then, I see Jasmine walk Dex past the house.

I climb down.

“Hey, is Army home yet?” she asks.

“Soon.” I sweep the kid up into my arms. “Leave him with me.” She hands me his bag.

“You’ve been paid?” I ask.

“He took care of it this morning.” She rubs Dex’s cheeks, giving him a big smile. “Have a good weekend,” she singsongs.

He giggles, and I take him inside, hearing the grandfather clock chime four o’clock. I stop in front of it to let him listen. He stares at the face, knowing that’s what’s making the sound, and I watch him, because it’s cute. He loves it so much. I already decided to try to find him a cuckoo clock for Christmas. One with beer-guzzling dancers. He’ll go apeshit for that.

Dropping his bag, I take us into the kitchen, set him down on the counter, and turn on the water, checking the temperature. Pumping soap into his hands, I give myself some and show him, like we do every time, how to lather and wash his fingers.

He tries to stick his hand in his mouth, and I take it back, helping him rinse.

“Da-da, da-da.”

“Soon, man,” I tell him.

It’s funny how he has his dad’s hair and mom’s eyes. I have my mom’s, too. Dallas, Trace, and Iron better reproduce with brown-eyed women. I’m tired of being a minority in this house.

We dry off, and I sit him in his high chair, taking out the steamed broccoli, chopped avocado, and bites of grilled chicken mixed with mayo and ranch dressing that Army left this morning. I spread it out on his tray, and he starts eating, while I make him a cup of water.

Walking over, I raise every window in the kitchen and move to the living room, doing the same in there. I close my eyes and inhale, my shoulders relaxing a little.

But my eyes stay closed. It’s good she stayed away. She ghosted Mariette and hasn’t come back for her toothbrush, her paycheck, or her dress.

Gone. Nice and clean. That’s the best way.

I shake my head, opening my eyes. Starting some music on my phone, I head back into the kitchen, seeing Dex kick his feet and eat as I start to slice the loaf of bread.

The front door opens and closes, and Trace enters the kitchen. “You’re done early,” I say.

“What’s this?” He lifts the lid on the pot on the stove, sniffing the chili. “Mmm.”

“Tech Advantage called.” I place the bread on the table as Army and Dallas stroll in, everyone making themselves a bowl. “They wanted a cleanup tomorrow for an event next week.”

“I have a …” Trace starts to make an excuse but then stops. “Nothing.”

I study him for a second, and then pull Dex’s high chair up to the corner of the table between me and Army. We all sit, Dallas digging his spoon into the chili.

“There’s shit going on at the beach,” he explains to me. “Trace wants to be there.”

But Trace interjects. “It’s fine. I’ll do the job.”

He stares down at his food, and I’m not sure what the hell is going on. I mean, I know I’ve been yelling at him to grow up for years, but now that he is … I dig in my eyebrows.

Dallas chimes in again. “I’ll fill in for him.”

Trace gapes at his brother. I dig in my eyebrows deeper. What. The. Fuck.

“Are you sure?” Trace asks him.

Dallas shrugs, shoveling food in. “I’m not doing anything else.”

“Thanks.” Trace finally puts on a happy face. “I’ll get you back.”

“What the hell happened while I was gone?” someone says. We all look up as Liv leans in the doorway with her hands in her pockets.

“Hey!” Trace shoots up, grabbing her in a hug like she wasn’t just home three weeks ago.

He sits, and she whips off her black jacket, heading to the stove for a bowl. “I leave for college and y’all turn sweet?”

“What are you doing home?” Army asks her.

“Christmas.”

“That’s this month?” Dallas looks around the table. “Shit.”

She scoops chili into a bowl, sniffing it as she puts the lid back on the pot. “Ugh, what did you do to my recipe?”

“I taught you how to make that, you little shit,” I mumble.

“You tried to,” she fires back.

She swings her leg over the chair at the end of the table like she’s climbing on a horse and sits. I glance up briefly.

“Table is feeling empty without you and Iron.” Trace hands her some bread. “And Krisjen.”

“Thanks.” She takes a slice and then looks around. “Where is Krisjen? At Mariette’s?”

I chew, the table falling quiet. No one has mentioned her since I came home that morning. They knew to leave it alone.

“We saw her in town today,” Dallas finally says. “She looked different.”

“Gorgeous, actually,” Army adds.

“Like glass,” Trace mumbles over his food. “Beautiful, shiny, fucking glass.”

He sounds angry.

“All the Saints look like that,” Dallas tells him.

I push my spoon through the chili, feeling eyes on me. When I look up, Liv is watching me.

“But when they love you,” she muses, “you’ve never had anything softer in your arms.”

My heart stops.

“Like they’re so grateful when someone is gentle with them,” she almost whispers.

I feel my pulse in my stomach, seeing Krisjen in my head. In my house, in the tub next to me that day, in my restaurant …

“Yeah, well.” Army rises. “Fuck it.”

He carries his bowl to the sink, and like Trace and Dallas, he hasn’t asked me what happened with Krisjen, but unlike Trace and Dallas, I’m not sure he cares. And I deserve it. He liked her. Even if he did offer to fucking share her.

“I was thinking we could all go for a ride tonight,” Liv says. “We all have bikes. They have the food trucks at Delgando Beach, and the weather’s pretty perfect.”

Trace perks up, but I feel his eyes on me as if waiting for me to allow it.

I finish chewing and stand up. “That’s a good idea.”

Trace slaps the table. “Hell yeah.”

“No girlfriends,” I hear Dallas order.

Army turns. “I’ll get Dex in bed later and see if Aracely can come over to sit with him.”

“I’m going to go get some more work done outside first,” I tell them.

Dallas stands up. “I’ll help.”

I point to Trace. “You got dishes.”

I start to leave, hearing Liv and Dallas argue behind me. “No girlfriends? I can’t tell Clay she can’t come, Dallas.”

“She can’t come!”

“We want you to ourselves for a while,” Trace points out.

“Ugh, fine.”

I shake with a laugh, stepping out the front door. Heading back to the addition, I pull on some gloves and look up at Santos. “Your wife’s sister …” I say. “When the walls are ready for paint, send her by.”

He smiles, and I start climbing up the scaffolding.

We descend the stairs.

My brothers’ and sister’s boots scuff the cement steps behind me on our way down to the unmarked black door. I tilt my head, cracking my neck.

It’s been a week.

Garrett Ames wants an answer to his proposal to buy land in Sanoa Bay.

And he’ll meet only on his turf.

The Wolfe Room.

It’s a secret underground meeting place where the real parties at Fox Hill Country Club happen. It’s on the lower level of the clubhouse, but anyone passing by on the golf course would just assume it was an employee entrance. Or a utility room. Very few members—or their families—know what happens inside.

But Liv does. Army didn’t want me to bring her, given that Milo Price and Callum Ames tried to hurt her in here last spring, but this time she has us.

And Milo Price has a scar. For now.

They’ll both pay. They just don’t know it yet.

I knock twice, and in just as many seconds, the door swings open.

Garrett Ames greets us with a smile. Sickly sweet. Like spit filled with sugar. “Please, come in.”

He steps back, making way, and I glance at Jerome Watson and another man sitting at a round table with five seats. The other one looks vaguely familiar, but before I can place him, Garrett speaks up.

“I’m surprised you agreed to meet here.”

“Well,” Trace says. “We wanted to see inside.”

And then he proceeds to look up and around, wide-eyed, like if we pinch our pennies, maybe we can golf here someday, too.

“Wow,” he coos.

I contain my smile but feel the pride all the same.

“Excuse us for being late.” I set my helmet down on the round table and sit in an empty seat. “We were out on a joyride.”

Jerome Watson eyes me, amused. “All of Tryst Six, huh? Oh. No, I forgot. There’s only five left now.”

For now, fucker.

My siblings pull up chairs from around the room, and while I’m tempted to take a long look around the infamous place in person, I refrain. They don’t need a reminder that I’ve never been here before. They know.

“Let’s hurry this up.” Ames pulls out a chair, unbuttons his suit jacket, and sits. “The markets are about to open again in Tokyo. I need to get on the phone.”

I never noticed the smell of the leather of all the Jaeger jackets—mine, Army’s, Dallas in Iron’s, and Liv in my old one (Trace prefers a T-shirt)—but I smell it now. The muscles in my arms feel ten feet thick.

An attendant stands at the wall behind Ames, his hands locked in front of his body as if he’s ready to pour a drink or pull out a chair.

I glance at the only other person at the table, and my pulse kicks up a notch.

Lachlan Conroy.

I knew who Krisjen’s father was, but I would’ve known him anyway.

She has his eyes. Why is he here?

“The same deal is on the table,” Ames starts off, and it takes a minute to bring my gaze back to the meeting at hand. “Two hundred acres, you know what I’m willing to pay,” he states. “I’m playing ball, because this is faster than going through the government, but I can go through the government.”

I don’t have the authority to sell the land. It’s owned by several Sanoa Bay residents. But I am head of the community council, and I’m just about the only reason they haven’t sold their stakes yet. I can persuade them.

Or dissuade them.

I study the scar on his jaw. A groove with three lines. Like a shooting star. It’s faint. Not the first thing you see when you first meet him, but I’ve known that it was there for a while.

His eyes gleam. “I will get what I want, Macon.”

“For three times the price you’re offering to pay me.”

“What I’m offering to pay you is twice what they will when they take your land.”

He’s not wrong. He knows it, and he knows I know it.

I avert my eyes to the side, but I sweep over the corner of the room, at the top, near the ceiling. The fiber-optic lens hidden in the stag antlers. It records everything.

And judging from the things that just happened in this room last night, I’m guessing they don’t know it’s there.

“That star on your jaw.” I tap my fingers on the table. “I have the same scar. It comes from my father’s ring when he hits you.”

Army shifts to my right, and I see him look at me. None of them know where I got mine. I have a lot of scrapes. We all do.

“It was an accident with me,” I tell Ames. “We were both upset, I hit him first, but not many people have that mark. What did you do to him?” I cock my head. “He wasn’t typically violent.”

My father hit me twice in my life, and both times he was defending himself. He forgot he was wearing the ring that day.

Ames stares at me flatly. “Do we have a deal?”

“Was it over my mom?” I press. “When I was a couple of years old, she worked in your parents’ house for a time, right?”

Dallas’s breathing grows heavier behind me.

I go on, “My dad said one night she came home and never went back. What did you try with her?”

Liv shoots out of her chair, but I hold out my arm, pushing her back down.

“You wanted a piece of her, didn’t you?” I say. “Did you get it?”

I feel the heat rolling off Army and Trace, hear Liv’s knuckles crack. Ames went after our mom, like his son, Callum, went after my sister last April.

“If you got it,” I tell him, “I suspect you wouldn’t still be so angry.”

He’s been targeting us for as long as I can remember.

“Callum has a taste for our side of the tracks, too.” I clear my throat. “He’s your heir, correct?”

His eyes pierce like a raptor’s.

“Your only child,” I say. “Correct?”

Not correct. He has another son. At least one other one. It would create a fucking mess for Garrett Ames if Callum ever found that out.

But before Ames can react, there’s a knock on the door.

I tense. Santos is outside. One call away if we need him.

The attendant crosses the room and answers the door. Jerome Watson rises from his chair before I even look.

“Krisjen,” he says.

I turn my eyes over my shoulder, seeing her for the first time in days.

Glass. Did she look like that last year when she and Liv were in school together? She wears a black tennis skirt and a matching tight sleeveless shirt. I take in every inch of golden skin on her neck, her arms, and her thighs. I was everywhere on her. Just days ago.

Why is she here?

“You’re dressed for golf,” Watson says.

Her gaze drifts to me but faces forward again, like she doesn’t recognize me.

“I like night games,” she tells him.

He gestures for her to sit. “Me, too.”

She doesn’t take the seat offered, and I try not to glare at him. Did he invite me here because she would be here?

Liv looks around, and I can tell—same as me—she’s trying to figure out what’s going on.

“Krisjen—” her father starts.

But she cuts him off. “I’ll deal with you in a minute.”

She stands in front of the table, addressing Watson only. “I want my own room.”

I freeze. What the fuck?

“Until I’m ready to share yours,” she tells him.

A truck sits on my chest, but I don’t shift my eyes off the table.

Jerome knew he was meeting with one of us tonight and decided to kill two birds with one stone. He wanted me to see this.

Liv sits up. “Krisjen, what are you doing?”

Krisjen doesn’t reply.

Jerome Watson doesn’t sound fazed. “What else?” he demands.

“My brother and sister come with me.”

“What?” her father speaks up. “Where’s your mother?”

But no one pays him any mind. My head swims.

“Your sister,” Jerome tells her. “Your brother should be away at school by now.”

“What the hell is this?” her father barks.

Good question. It seems Krisjen has realized she can do better. I shouldn’t care. She never lied. She knew she’d give in.

“Why would I still want you?” Watson asks her, suddenly playing hard to get.

He may not know she fucked Army and Iron, but he does know about Trace. My stomach twists with knots.

Fuck her.

I clench my jaw before speaking. “Whether you marry her or not,” I tell him, “you’re going to want a piece of her. Trust me.”

And now he knows I had her, too.

Her father pounds the table with his fist once, and Dallas laughs under his breath. Krisjen doesn’t move.

I stand up, collecting my helmet as my brothers and sister get up with me. Screw this. I wasn’t going to give Ames anything anyway, but now, I hope there’s a fucking war. They’re all going to bleed.

“I will get the land,” Ames says, warning me before I bolt.

“The hard way, then,” I say in a low voice. “I’m in the mood for a fight. A long, loud, expensive fight.”

“There may be losses.”

“As long as you’re okay with that,” I tell him.

Trace chuckles, and Dallas stretches his arms in the air. “Ah, this is going to be fun.”

I kick my chair back, hearing it tumble behind me. “And the stock market in Tokyo is closed all day,” I tell Ames as I walk out. “It’s Saturday there.”