Now, two days later, here I was, pushing the door open, expecting to find Sailor in the kitchen, sulking, waiting for an apology (why was I apologizing again?), eyeing me like I took a shit in her bed—like she had for the remainder of Knight and Luna’s stay. The worst part was, I was going to apologize. I’d bought flowers from Trader Joe’s.
I even Googled best flowers to get a chick.
I put work into this thing.
But Sailor wasn’t here. The apartment was empty. I strode to the kitchen island, disposing the flowers on the counter and imagining the worst—she was just the type to throw the last five months away and bail on me—when I noticed a piece of paper on the kitchen island.
I picked it up.
Hunt,
Lana is in town early. I went to see Crystal for an urgent meeting, then found out we landed the GW cover. I’m flying to New York and will be back in a couple days. Notified your father.
Be good.
Sailor
I gritted my teeth to a point I was surprised they didn’t turn to dust.
I had two days of zero supervision without my nanny dearest, and all I wanted was to have her back. The irony wasn’t lost on me. My most unholy temptation was living under the same roof, a wolf in sheep’s clothing. I pulled my phone from my pocket, but as I stared at her name in my contacts, I realized this wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have on the phone.
It wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have at all, to be honest.
Besides, maybe some time apart would do us good. Maybe it’d set her head straight and make her see we didn’t need each other after all. Maybe it would remind me of what Sailor was: a temporary fix. I’d talked about her and analyzed her behavior—with my tyrant brother, no less—which meant this shit had gone too far.
The more I thought about it, the more I was happy she wasn’t here. Good riddance.
I hoped she’d have fun shooting the GW cover she wasn’t even excited for.
Maybe she would. Sailor did a fine job lying to herself. She hated fame. Loathed interviews. Detested being in the spotlight. And recently, I suspected, she’d also come to despise archery itself. She was working on autopilot.
Feeling my nostrils flare with anger, I grabbed the flowers and shoved them into the trash can, cramming them in with my foot, half-kicking them all over the kitchen.
I grabbed my laptop and retired to my room, planning to go ham on some Thai food and listen to Syllie’s recordings to finally find incriminating information on the asshole.
Without the goddamn nanny.
Four hours into the recording, I hit the jackpot.
By the sound of it, he was meeting face to face with someone. I didn’t know who, but prior to that, I’d heard him driving for an hour and a half, so it was likely out of Boston. He’d been fidgety on his way there—changed radio channels frequently, sighed and muttered profanity at the traffic. He’d called his wife twice and forgotten what he wanted to tell her both times. Kill had called him once to get some details about our refinery trip to Maine. He’d cross-examined him about the health and safety failures. Three of the machines there were down. It all sounded like gibberish to me. Desalter units. Vacuum distillation. Amine gas treater. The only thing I knew was this shit sounded like something I didn’t want to touch. After Sylvester hung up the phone, I heard him punching the steering wheel again and again and again, mumbling, dammit.
He’d slammed his car door shut (I made a mental note to check where he’d driven with the tracking device I’d put there) and walked into someplace. It sounded quiet, the earth crunchy with leaves. He talked to someone. Male. He sounded older and not from here. Thick, Eastern European accent. Russian, maybe. His English was impeccable, though, his words measured.
“How are we getting along with the plan?” Syllie sniffed.
He was pacing, I could tell. Hours upon hours of listening to his recordings had helped me recognize his tells: the way he talked, walked, and clicked his pen in succession when he was nervous.
“We are making progress, but as I said before, it is a sophisticated operation, and there are a lot of things to take into consideration. We are planning for seven potential scenarios. The men involved in the operation would like some reassurance that their families will be compensated, should something happen to them.”
“And they will be compensated,” Syllie snapped. “As long as the Fitzpatricks are out of my way.”
“I’m afraid they’ll need more assurance than that. I do not blame them for being skeptical. It is not every day a beggar tries to dethrone a king.” The Eastern European man clucked his tongue, lighting a cigarette by the sound of the lighter flicking.
“Where is this coming from?” Syllie spat. “The details of our deal have already been signed and agreed upon.”
“Deals change. The risk is great. Your reward, greater.”
“And the contract?” Sylvester was probably foaming at the fucking mouth at this point.
“Good as any old piece of paper. You’ve yet to pay a penny, and they’ve yet to execute your plan. They can still back out. Right now, it seems like they are.”
“You think I have millions lying around, waiting to be gifted? Think about the amount of money Royal Pipelines will lose as a result. We’re talking at least two hundred mill in the red, not to mention the legal fees. And don’t get me started on our shareholders. It will be a black day for Wall Street.”
I sat upright in my bed, causing the half-empty cartons of Thai food to spill from where they were propped on my thighs to the carpet. Hell if I cared. This was what I needed—some kind of admission, proof that Syllie was planning something. And he was. Weirdly, the first person I wanted to run to with this information wasn’t Da or even Kill. It was Sailor. Which went to show how pussy-whipped I was, because she had no skin in this game. But I knew how proud she’d be that I’d nailed it.
That’s it, asshole. You’re going cold turkey on this bitch, even after she comes back. You need to get her out of your system.
“You will lose a fraction of what you are gaining.” The man who spoke with Syllie took a drag of his cigarette. “And have the world at your feet in return. If your excuse for why you shouldn’t raise refinery workers’ salaries is stirring pity in Wall Street brokers, you may want to try another tactic.”
“What are you asking?” My father’s right hand retorted. “Get to the point.”
“They would each like three million dollars over the course of the next three years, paid in unmarked Bitcoin, so they can trade and resell them as they see fit. As for me, I’d like a substantial number of shares in Royal Pipelines. I’ll buy them kosher, and you’ll slip the money back to me through the back door.”
“What do you consider substantial?”
“Fifteen percent is my starting point.”
“Is this a joke?”
“I’m afraid humor is not my strong suit.”
There was silence, and then some arguing. In the end, they didn’t reach an agreement, but it was easy to see the Eastern European dude had Syllie’s balls in a vise. I stopped listening when Syllie stomped his way back to the car and slammed his door.
I wanted to take this to Cillian and Da, to throw it in their faces and tell them I’d been right all along. In fact, I’d shoved my feet into my sneakers and dropped the USB with the recording in my front pocket, halfway through the door, when I remembered what Cillian had said.
It was my operation to handle.
It was my war to fight.
I’d started it, and I needed to finish—a hunter going for the kill.
Even though I knew Sylvester Lewis was up to something, I didn’t have all the pieces of the puzzle yet. There was more to unveil. Worst of all, I knew Syllie to be a very resourceful man and was afraid he’d spin it somehow with his smooth tongue.
No. I was going to wait it out and deal with him myself.
I was going to earn my place at Royal Pipelines.
I was going to show Athair I was his.
20
SAILOR
The last thing I wanted to do after New York was go straight from the airport to the archery club.
My feet blistered from standing on heels all day, my skin was raw from the makeup they’d slapped on me—then rubbed off of my face—and my scalp burned from all the hairspray and tugging. I’d sat for three hours and answered questions that had nothing to do with archery, then ended up missing my training session in New York. Everything felt chaotic and pointless. Since when was being an athlete about the fame and not the actual sport?
But Junsu had insisted I meet him at the club. Things between us were so strained, I figured appeasing him was more important than catching up on sleep. Besides, a huge chunk of me didn’t want to face Hunter again. I’d received radio silence from him the last couple days.
I asked Dad, who picked me up from the airport, to take me straight to the club. He didn’t protest, though I could see the apostrophes between his eyebrows on our way there. I itched to reach and smooth them with my fingers.
“If you have something to say, you might as well do it,” I grumbled as we rounded the street to the club.
I knew he and Mom were worried about me. I’d never given them an answer about the summer semester. I just pretended we hadn’t had that conversation, shoved it into the jam-packed denial drawer in my head.
Fuck-buddy purgatory. Life purgatory.Same difference.
“You look like you haven’t slept in days.” Dad kept his eyes on the road, his jaw twitching.
Growing up, it had always surprised me how my dad, who seemed so formidable and terrifying to the rest of the world, gave me pretty much free reign when it came to my own life. When I asked him about it once, he said, “I cannot keep you from making mistakes, because then you’ll never learn from them. The world is tough, and cruel, and mostly unfair. It’s our job to find a way to navigate our way in it. The more I shield you, the less chance you’ll have of surviving.”
“That’s because I haven’t,” I admitted, fiddling with my seatbelt as we sliced past rows of red-bricked buildings, little cafes, and potted plants. The sky was wooly, heavy with gray clouds. Autumn had molded into winter. The seasons were changing, and with them, the circumstances of my life. “But I will. Now that Lana is here, all I need is to prove I deserve the Olympic spot. Then I can finally take my foot off the gas.”
“Like you did in the last decade?” he quipped, strangling the steering wheel.
“Whatever happened to letting me make my own mistakes so I can learn from them?”
“Whatever happened to learning from your mistakes? You’re killing yourself,” he countered. “And seeing you like this is killing your mother. I will not be a widower because you’ve a chip on your shoulder and something to prove. Clearly, the Fitzpatrick boy didn’t have the desired effect on you.”
Dumbstruck, I whirled toward him, struggling to keep my jaw from dropping.
“Excuse me?”
He rolled the sleeves of his dress shirt up. “I thought an arranged relationship would work for you as it worked for your mother and me. I was wrong,” he grumbled, not a trace of apology in his voice.
“Hunter and I are not in a relationship,” I lied. Maybe. Who the hell knew what we were at this point?
Dad had kind of, sort of, okay—totally—kidnapped Mom and married her back in the day. They hadn’t expected to fall in love, but fall madly in love they did. Still, I struggled to understand what made him think this was the norm.