James’s fingers squeezed, but Marcus gave him a subtle shoulder bump.
“How did you start?” Daphne asked. “Businesswoman to businesswoman, I’m curious.”
Chanel’s gaze zeroed in on her, her eyes narrowing. “You look familiar.”
“I doubt you saw any of my shows, but you probably saw me on a magazine cover or two,” Daphne replied. Oh, James was going to make her pay for this. But they couldn’t stand there all night; they needed information.
Interestingly, it was Gareth who recognized her. “Daphne Sancerre. The model.”
“The one and only,” she replied. Malcom’s jaw tensed as he took in James’s hand resting possessively on her body. She almost smiled. Yet one more thing James hadbeatenhis brother at—getting the girl. James wouldn’t see it that way, but Malcom sure as shit did.
“Pisses you off, doesn’t it, Malcom?” she said. A warning growl rumbled out of James, but she ignored him. She was already going to pay for it later, so may as well make it worth it.
“He had the amazing grandfather, the solid sports record, the distinguished military career,” she continued. “And now he has a big family, a home of his own, owns a bunch of businesses,andhas the hot, rich girlfriend.” She paused to let that sink in. The FBI wanted information on the trafficking ring, but James needed this confrontation. “He’s beaten you in every way, hasn’t he? He got all the luck in the family, and you got shit. You both did.”
“His fucking grandfather thought he walked on water,” Chanel said. Malcom’s eyes flickered in her direction, but he remained silent. “Couldn’t raise his own fucking son, but hisgrandson? He could do no wrong. No need for my baby brotherto deal with the same shit the rest of us had to deal with. No need for him to go hungry or dodge bullets or sell his soul to survive.”
Daphne didn’t point out that James had dealt with all of those, except selling his soul. He’d still gone hungry, he’d still dodged bullets, he’d still lived surrounded by packs of warring gangs.
“And when one more good thing landed in his lap, the inheritance, you saw an opportunity to take it all away from him,” Daphne said.
“The shit doesn’t deserve it,” Chanel said.
“Nicole,” Malcom warned. Daphne noted his use of her assumed name and wondered if he’d left their past behind better than his sister had.
“You hired Weeks and Beeker to kill him. Probably didn’t even matter what the inheritance was,” Daphne mused.
“We make enough here, we didn’t need it,” Malcom replied, surprising Daphne. She hadn’t expected him to jump into the conversation. She paused and studied him from behind her two sentinels. Angry energy, fueled by fear, still flowed off James, but neither of the men stopped her.
“You wanted to bring him down a peg,” she said. Death did a little more than that, but no need to be dramatic. “Your entire life, he had everything, and you had nothing. And now a windfall was falling into his lap. It’s the principle of the matter, isn’t it, Malcom? No one should lead such a charmed life when you were given shit.”
Malcom’s head tipped two inches to the left. “He shouldn’t have been born to begin with. Our mother was a good-looking woman, she had enough clients to keep us fed, to pay rent on our apartment. After she got knocked up, that all went away. No one wants to fuck a woman pregnant with another man’s baby. And the baby daddy was another gutter piece of shit.”
“On that, we agree,” James said.
Malcom’s eyes flickered to him, then stilled. “You fucked up our already fucked-up lives. Then you went away, and we never had to hear about you again.”
“Until Henry Jefferson’s law firm reached out to you while trying to locate me,” James said.
“And it all came back, didn’t it?” Daphne interjected. “The hate, the injustice, the memories of everything he’d taken from you.”
“Didn’t matter that you’ve made your own way in the world,” James stepped in again. “As shitty a way as it is, you’re not hurting for food or shelter.”
“Back on his fucking high horse,” Chanel said. “Always better than us, always judging us.”
“Didn’t matter,” Malcom confirmed. “Sometimes Mother Nature needs a little help in making sure the cosmic scales stay level.”
The muscles in the back of James’s neck tensed, but Daphne sensed the minuscule reaction stemmed from something he’d heard through his earpiece rather than Malcom’s words.
“How’d you move into this?” Daphne asked. “Your clients are wealthy; this house cost a pretty penny. You didn’t crawl out of the gutter and launch this enterprise.”
“You don’t mince your words, do you, little girl?” Ken said.
“You don’t get to where I got in my business by mincing words, little boy,” she shot back. Ken narrowed his eyes at her, but she dismissed him. He was a lackey for Malcom and Chanel; he’d do what he was told when he was told. Gareth, on the other hand, well, his silence interested her.
Gareth.
She turned her attention to him and ran her eyes over his face, taking in his individual features: wide forehead, round eyes with sockets slightly smaller than average, a nose that fit somewhere between pointy and round, full cheeksthat swallowed his cheekbones, and a jaw that, though not unattractive, was nondescript. Dropping her eyes even farther, she focused on his hands. They still twitched.
