“You’ll really consider it?”
“I’ll look at it,” he repeated, which was more of a concession than he’d ever given me before. Even when I was in school, fighting my way through finals and design projects, he’d never cared unless it lined up with his philosophy of architecture. An unexpected and unfamiliar feeling sparked somewhere in the middle of my chest.
“You’ll look at it.”
“I’ll look,” he said, pushing himself up to his full height and heading for the door.
“Okay. Thank you.”
He shook his head, like the idea I would put more time into trying to impress him was ridiculous, and in a way, I supposed, it was. My mom had always been the cheerleader for us both, even when our ideas were at odds. I missed her often, but I missed her most when I had accomplishments I wanted to share. I hadn’t told my dad about the article being published because I knew he wouldn’t care. It could have gotten us new clients, but he refused to implement my ideas, and he refused to let me take on clients without his heavy-handed oversight.
If we didn’t win this proposal, it was going to be the end of the firm, and I’d have to leave. I refused to let my career be ruined, but there were only so many minutes I could stay on a sinking ship. The problem was if I left the firm, I’d have to leave my dad too. He wouldn’t accept me branching out onto my own or going to work with anyone else. My leaving—to him—would be the ultimate betrayal. And then I wouldn’t have my mom or him.
I’d be alone.
“This is your chance,” I said to myself, a pep talk that would never be enough to make me ready to face my father in the way he was asking.
I closed the lid on my laptop and stacked the remaining project files and their folders on top of it, then grabbed everything and headed toward my office.
It was almost five now, and it was a Friday, but there were designs for other projects that needed to be finalized and sent for approval before the end of the day, and those had somehow landed on me. I listened to my father bang around in his office, shutting everything down for the weekend. He didn’t even stop to make sure I had my list of items to complete before the end of the night. He didn’t confirm I’d be sending off the final bidson three smaller projects in El Segundo or that I’d be responding to the Q&A from a potential residential build in the Palisades. He didn’t have to because he knew I would. He had raised me to be reliable and, for the most part, I was.
He flipped the lights off in his office and left without saying goodbye.
I spent two more hours behind my desk before checking the last item off my to-do list, then I closed my computer and grabbed my phone. Flipping off the rest of the lights as I went, I made sure everything was shut down and locked up. The trashcan in the lobby hadn’t been emptied, I realized, and I made a mental note to talk to our receptionist Kelly about it on Monday, but I stopped, the idea half-formed in my brain when I realized the trash had been emptied.
There was only one thing inside the fresh bag.
The most recent issue ofLA Design Digest. The one with my article inside.
CHAPTER 2
MARSHALL
The only thing worse than having four younger brothers, I imagined, was having four youngerhalf-brothers.
After finishing up the joke of a meeting with Stanley and his son, I was early for my weekly family dinner, which wasn’t so much a whole family, just me and the four younger men I shared fifty percent of my genetic makeup with. As the oldest of the herd, I clocked in at thirty-nine. The second oldest brother, Finn, was thirty-five. Then came Hunter, who was also thirty-five. Because while all of them were half-brothers to me, they were also half to each other, and our father, Willem Covington, had never met a woman he didn't want to bed.
Which is how we ended up with Smith, the youngest by far at twenty-five.
Same age as Stanley Ayres’ kid, who wasn’t really a kid at all, but an overworked and overlooked shining star of his generation and our field. It was too bad for him—and the world as a whole—that he was going to burn out before he even had a chance to get going. Stanley had been pigheaded since I met him at school, and old age clearly hadn’t made himany wiser. He was going to ruin his business and his only son’s life if he didn’t get his head out of his ass.
My brothers and I had taken bets on more than one occasion about how many other Covington brothers were floating around, but it had been years since any had come out of the woodwork. My father had gotten rich at the right time, thanks to some well-played stocks back in the eighties, so anyone foolish enough to get pregnant by him never kept it a secret for long. The women would be paid off accordingly and given the choice to keep the child or…for lack of a better term, sell him.
My father—ourfather—wasn’t cruel. He was simply pragmatic.
It was crass to explain to people outside of our circle, but all four of our mothers had taken the latter deal, relinquishing parental rights in exchange for a sum of money that none of us would ever know about. In return, we were raised together for the most part, tutored and trained and boarded, wrapped up with expensive college educations and hand-selected internships, then sent into the world.
Smith was not only the youngest, he was also running headlong toward his teens by the time he’d come around. I had already graduated from college, and Hunter and Finn were well on their way. The house we’d all grown up in was practically empty when Smith landed on the doorstep, and the end years of his childhood were far different from ours. More isolated and more lonely, but for the most part, he’d turned out all right. The twins, as I called them, even though they weren’t, had tried to be present for Smith, and I even tried to come around more, but our youngest brother hadn’t wanted any of it.
Not until he’d graduated himself, and then it was like meeting a completely different person. Smith Covington accepted his diploma and tossed his cap into the air like he’d tossed away a death sentence. It wasn’t until after he had finallysettled in his first post-graduate job that I realized how hard he’d been fighting behind the scenes to keep himself together emotionally.
He refused to talk about it, and the three of us gave up trying to press the matter. As far as we could tell, Smith was as well-adjusted as anyone could be in his situation, but it was shortly after his graduation that we’d started our weekly little get-togethers. If he saw through our motives and knew it for the check-in we meant it to be, he never said anything, which was for the better.
To be honest, the touchpoints weren’t just for him anymore. All of us had our struggles. My current one being Stanley Ayres and his attempts to trip me up from securing the Walterson Homes project off Cahuenga. He’d steal it right out from under me if he stopped talking long enough to listen to his son, Silas, but there wasn’t much Stanley loved more than the sound of his own voice so I didn’t think it was likely.
I’d gone straight to the restaurant after leaving the meeting with Ayres, where I’d tucked into our usual booth and ordered a glass of red wine, which I was halfway through when Finn showed up.
“Are you ever not working?” he asked, collapsing into the seat across from me with a dramatic huff. He stretched his arm across the table, clasping my laptop and turning it to face him.
