Of course, the universe wouldn’t let me have even one exit with dignity. My boot slipped on the first icy step and my free hand flew out. The wine wobbled dangerously as I caught myself with a muttered curse.
I regained my balance, mentally willed myself to stop vibrating from adrenaline left over after that encounter, and forced myself up the steps without looking back. Except, somehow, I could still feel him there, his engine idling and his headlights washing over the snow.
Probably watching me with those intent green eyes. He didn’t pull away until I’d unlocked the front door, practically fallen inside, and then shut it behind me.
It was only a few seconds after that when I heard the faint roll of tires on slush as he finally drove off. I leaned back against the door, my breath coming too fast and my heartbeat punching at my ribs. The wine bottle thudded lightly against my thigh as my hand shook, but then the silence closed in.
All the rage, the grief, and the old, rotting hurt I’d been suffocating under for years surged up at once, threatening to drag me under. I squeezed my eyes shut, wondering where this was suddenly coming from.
I was good at shoving this stuff down, pretending it’d never even affected me to begin with, but then I realized that Alex Westwood had gotten under my skin tonight—and the worst part was that I’d let him.
CHAPTER 6
ALEX
The profiles covered the entire conference table—pictures, faces, names—pretty much all the personal data we might need was splayed out like an expensive crime scene. I stood at the head of the long glass table in the conference room at Westwood and Sons, staring down at the impressive spread with a flicker of satisfaction in my chest.
Everything we needed to get the job done was right here. Nate was standing beside me and he tilted his head as he studied one of the photos. It was of a board member from Thayer Steelworks, a man in his late sixties with thinning hair and a smile too forced to mean anything but guilt.
Nate’s eyes narrowed, sharp and calculating, his mind already running through probabilities, angles, and pressure points. He and I often operated on a sort of hive mind, our shared brainwaves sometimes closer to twin-tuition than those of our actual twin brothers.
I nodded once, giving him a small, wry smile. “I’m not sure this is totally legal.”
“Probably not,” he agreed with a shrug, completely unfazed either way. “My contact has her bases covered, though. She always does. Don’t worry.”
I hated when he did that, dangling information like bait and waiting to see if I’d take it. Nate had studied finance with a pinch of computer engineering during college. He’d claimed his brain neededhobbies, and somewhere along the way, he’d met a ghost.
A hacker. A mole. A phantom he’d never named, never described, and never even hinted at. Until now.
Apparently,shewas a mastermind, able to find out everything about everyone, and she was my brother’s most closely guarded secret.
“I didn’t realize your mole was a woman,” I said, glancing at him.
He didn’t so much as flinch. The guy handled spreadsheets for fun, but when it came to keeping secrets, he was a vault wrapped in steel, set on fire, submerged in concrete, and then launched into fucking space.
Eventually, he tapped the corner of a profile. “This definitely isn’t totally illegal either. All this information is already public. My friend just did some extra digging, looking into memberships to clubs, ties to other families. Hobbies. Interests. Wives. Mistresses.”
“Useful things,” I murmured, pacing slowly around the table with my hands in my pockets as I thought it over.
“Things we need,” Nate corrected, his tone calm, but underneath it, there was that slight hum he got when he was excited. When a puzzle was laid out in front of him and he knew he was going to solve it. “If we’re going to infiltrate the Thayer board and start making friends, these are things that will make our lives easier.”
I exhaled through my nose and glanced at him, those typical Westwood blue eyes of his blazing with intellectual fire. These kinds of deals were his playground, the ones that needed a little something more intricately thought out than just knowing where to sign the check.
This wasn’t going to be a normal acquisition by any means. Buying out a company was easy. Money on the table. A handshake. A signature.
This?
This was buying out a person—orpeople—for a vote. It would be a slow game of pressure and persuasion, digging through lives, finding the weakest link, and then deciding which one to yank at.
“We need four votes on the quorum to hold majority,” I said, circling the table again to look at each face individually. “Nora Thayer holds two. The rest hold a single vote each.”
“It’s an odd setup,” Nate said.
“It was given to her to make it look like the Thayer family still had a say. She got it in the divorce to save face, but she doesn’t have majority, so it doesn’t matter.” I pointed at two of the profiles, waving my finger slowly from one to the other. “We’ll take these two. They have memberships at the same club as Dad. It won’t be hard to pin them down and start getting friendly.”
Nate skimmed the sheets. “Both are past retirement age.”
“Exactly. Let’s make that idea sweeter for them.”
