CHAPTER 1
WILL
My twin brother had been at my place for less than five minutes, and somehow, he’d already managed to make the entire place feel unstable.
That was Jesse’s gift.
Some people brought calm. He brought the energy of a natural disaster. Except disasters didn’t usually wear designer shoes while wreaking havoc.
By the time I came back from the kitchen with two tumblers of whiskey filled to the brim, he was pacing the length of the living room, his hands flexing at his sides like he might take a swing at the furniture just to see its reaction.
I handed him a glass, hoping alcohol and something to hold would calm him down, but he didn’t even look at it.
“This is insane,” he said, for probably the sixth time since he walked in the door. “You know that, right? Completely fucking insane.”
“I’m reserving judgment.” I took a sip of my drink and settled into a leather armchair in front of the fireplace. “I wasn’t actually there for the meeting, so you’re going to have to catch me up before I commiserate.”
To be fair, I’d gotten the highlights outside Dad’s house earlier, but it had mostly been yelling and stomping. Jesse had started spiraling before I could get the full story from him and our oldest brother Alex had been tight-lipped, simply expecting me tofix itwithout giving me much to go on.
Jesse dragged a hand through his hair and started pacing again. Up. Down. Up. Down.
I was going to get a crick in my neck if I kept watching him. A tennis-spectating injury without even leaving my house. The place wasn’t small, but he still always managed to make it feel cramped when he got like this.
Restless. Too much energy with no place to go.
The luxury townhouse used to belong to my mother’s family. She’d left it to me in her will and it had been home for ten years now. While it offered me some much-needed privacy from my family, who were increasingly up in my business, it had also become a sanctuary for Jesse whenever he graced us with his presence, blowing into town from Miami like a hurricane with a trust fund.
Usually, I didn’t mind. Jesse at rest was entertaining. Jesse in a spiral, however, was significantly less so.
“This is all Sterling’s fault,” he suddenly announced. “Meddling fucking?—”
“Sterling?” As in our eldest cousin? I blinked hard.Well, that’s new. “What does he have to do with it?”
“Everything,” Jesse snapped. “He just had to go and run into some old family friend while he was in Scotland for a charity event.”
“That does happen sometimes,” I said, still confused as hell. “People run into other people. They might even talk to those people if they know them and he’s got that castle in Scotland, so it even makes sense that he was there.”
He shot me a look that suggested he took great offense to my very existence right about now. “You know what I mean.”
I did, but I wasn’t going to make this easy for him. What he’d said earlier about pulling the old twin-switcheroo might’ve been a joke, but he was still going to pay for it. Plus, I honestly didn’t understand why Sterling running into an old friend was such a problem.
“Okay, I’ll bite. Who did he run into and why does talking to this person make everything that’s wrong with the world his fault?”
“James Roderick,” he said, then lifted his glass to his lips and drank at least a quarter of his whiskey in one long gulp. “Apparently, Dad and Uncle Harlan knew him when they were young. They used to be loose friends or whatever. Now suddenly, he shows up out of nowhere and derails my entire life.”
“That does sound inconvenient,” I agreed mildly. “You might have to land the plane before this starts making sense, though.”
He stopped pacing long enough to glare at me. “I’m serious, Will.”
“Really? I couldn’t tell.” I sighed and leaned back in the armchair, kicking my ankle up on my knee and getting comfortable. It was starting to look like this was going to take a while. “Let’s go back a few more steps, shall we? Who exactly is this James Roderick?”
The pacing started again and I reached up to massage my neck just as he spat out a name like it was a missile. “James Roderick.”
“Yeah, you said that.”
“EarlJames Roderick, and he’s offering Dad something he’s wanted for a long, long,longtime.”
That gave me pause. There weren’t many things our father wanted that he hadn’t already gotten, one way or another.Honestly, it was a damn short list that consisted mostly of things that had proven stubbornly out of reach.
