Her mother sighed. “I don’t know who did what. Your father is working full time again, so maybe it’s on him, too.”
Mati sent her mother a dubious look.
Her mother frowned. “All I know is they’ve hired new, cheaper drivers and let the men who have been with us for decades go, after all they’ve done for this family and that company.” Her mother’s eyes filled with tears.
That explained how Frankie had been hired—though it didn’t excuse it one iota—and why her brothers were driving routes for the first time in years.
Mati shook her head in dismay. “It sounds bad, that’s for sure. But why do you have to sell the house?”
Her mother looked down at her hands, and Mati was one hundred percent certain whatever her mother was about to say was going to piss her off.
“Your father gave your brothers our retirement savings and took out a second mortgage. It was supposed to help them turn it around.”
Mati stood so fast her chair screeched across the floor. “He didwhat?”
“You heard me,” her mother said quietly.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Mati’s hands were shaking, she was so angry.
“Your father doesn’t have to run his decisions past you,” her mother said sharply.
Right.She only got to hear about it when they came back to bite them all in the ass.
She racked her brain, trying to figure out when all of this could have happened. Mikey had only started trying to talk to her a week ago. “When was that?”
“Almost two years ago,” her mother admitted, sadness clouding her eyes.
When Mati had been doing the books five years ago, they’d been doingfine.Great, even. Plenty of money in the bank, a huge line of credit. Her father had been able to retire at sixty that year.
It must have started tanking the minute he walked out the door.
“Thoseidiots,” she snapped.
“Tilly!”
They’d squandered the business. And their parents’ house? Theirsavings?
Oh god, and Mikey had asked her abouthersavings when he’d called. The goddamn nerve.
“Those fuckingassholes,” Mati growled.
Her mother shot from her chair, remarkably spry when she wanted to be. “Matilda Viveiros! Don’t you use that language in my house!”
Mati choked back the desire to ask her mom if she meantthe bank’s house.
Motherfucker, her brothers were theworst.
“Sorry, Mom,” she said, trying and failing to put a lid on her rage.
She grabbed her phone off the table and fired off a text to Reese.
Set your guys loose on Viveiros and Sons AND my parents. Need to know who holds the mortgages and all debts ASAP.
Reese wrote back immediately.On it.
“I’m going to fix this.”
Her mom looked so hopeful it made Mati’s heart ache—then her face fell and she gave Mati a stern look. “I’m sure you want to help, but you shouldn’t give them your savings, too—”
