Satisfaction

by Lexi Blake

  Bran shook his head. Was his brother high? “She was being faithful to the mission, Drew. I know that. Carly wouldn’t choose Patricia over me. That’s ridiculous. And of course I’m going to her, but I have to sneak back in. And I have to do something first.”

  “Why the hell did you say those things to her, then?” Drew asked with a huff.

  Bran groaned. “What was I supposed to say? Should I have dropped to one knee and professed my love then and there? Carly knows that was all for show.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Hatch said with a shake of his head as the data files started to pull up. “She chucked her earpiece. She won’t talk to us.”

  His heart clenched. She couldn’t believe he meant what he’d said. “She’s alone?”

  Drew held a hand up. “Case is watching her and she hasn’t gotten rid of her camera. I can see what’s happening. She’s working at this point. Dinner is almost done and she’s been dealing with the catering staff. We have other problems, though. Someone’s piggybacking our feed.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Drew ran a hand through his hair. “It means someone piggybacked our feed and was listening in. I would shut everything down, but I don’t want to lose sight of Carly. I’ve got a call in to Dallas. I think it might be one of McKay-Taggart’s hackers. I know Ian wasn’t thrilled about this job. He’s likely keeping an eye on it, but it makes me nervous. Until he calls back and confirms, I’ll be anxious. It’s why I’m using a separate computer on the drive. I don’t want anyone seeing that information.”

  So everyone had seen his issues. Everyone had watched him nearly ruin the mission and then dump Carly right there in front of a crowd. Did she believe he’d walked away cursing her? “I lost it again.”

  “Yeah, you did.” Drew took a deep breath. “I think it’s time to talk.”

  “I think I need to see that guy that Case talked about, but only if I can convince Carly to come with me. If not, then I’m going to need a referral to a therapist wherever we land.” It might smooth things over between them. Carly would feel better if he was dealing with his problems.

  Drew stared at him, his body still. “What are you saying?”

  “I love Carly and that means I have to deal with all the shit I went through. I have to be the man she needs me to be. It means something else, too. I have to be honest with you. You left me there, Drew.” He hated how emotional he was getting, but he had to get this out. He realized now that this was what sat between him and Carly. Even when they made love this anger inside him was a wall that kept them apart. He didn’t want that. Not one second longer.

  Drew’s eyes closed and he nodded. “I know I did.”

  “Tell me why. I never asked because I thought I knew the answer.”

  Drew’s eyes opened and Bran was surprised to see they weren’t clear. There was a suspicious shine to them. “It was easier to leave you. I was busy building something and you were a teenage boy. I thought I would get you when you aged out of the system, like I did Riley. I want to tell you it was all about building something for us, but it wasn’t. I wanted revenge and I chose it. I picked it over you, Bran, and I’m so sorry.”

  Bran took a deep breath. “Okay.”

  Hatch stood up, looking older than his years. “Don’t think this is Drew’s fault.”

  Drew held out a hand. “Don’t, Hatch. This is between me and Bran.”

  “But it shouldn’t be, damn it. He shouldn’t be looking at you,” Hatch said, his voice gravelly. He stepped in front of Drew and looked Bran in the eyes. “You should be looking at me. Drew was just a kid himself. I was a damn adult. I left all of you. Every single one of you. I left you behind and I feel it every day.”

  Oh, that felt good. Something opened inside Bran. “You were my father’s best friend. He trusted you.”

  “I was your uncle,” Hatch said. “Not by blood, but I was there when you were born. It was my responsibility and I chose a bottle over my best friend’s children. I did that and I haven’t known how to talk to you about it. We picked you up from the hospital after that terrible day and you didn’t say anything. You never said anything, so I tried to be your friend.”

  Hatch was the one who took him to strip clubs after Bran had gotten kicked out of college for fighting. Hatch had set up another school for him and he’d shown up and taken him out that night with a fake ID.

  In his own weird way, he’d been trying to teach him to cope, since Bran had threatened to run away if they sent him back to therapy. He was sure most people would say Hatch had been a terrible influence, but Bran had found a place there. He’d felt better there, more at home than he had in Drew’s world.

  They’d all been orphans. None of them had known how to cope. Drew had his revenge. Riley had women. Hatch had the bottle and then he’d watched over Bran.

  It might be time to realize they’d all done the best they could.

  Bran looked at his brother. “Would you do it again? Choose the same way?”

  “No. I wouldn’t. Ask me. Ask me what you want to ask me and let me choose again.”

  So his brother did understand. “Walk away. If you don’t, we’ll all drift apart. I loved them, too, but I don’t want to lose any more family. Please let this be the last of it. Unless we find a name on that drive, hand all of this over to McKay-Taggart and let them handle it. Let us be a family again.”

  “All right.” Drew put a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll do it for you.”

  Something eased inside him. Something that had been tight for so long he’d forgotten what it felt like to be relaxed. He’d needed his brother to say it out loud, to admit what had happened. It made it oddly easy to say what he said next. “I forgive you, Drew. And you, Hatch.”

  He found himself in the middle of a mega man hug. It was weird. It was a little wonderful.

  After a moment Hatch and Drew pulled away and Bran smiled, feeling lighter than he had in years.

  “Are you ever going to tell us what happened that night?” Drew asked.

  “Yes, but I have to tell her first.” Carly was his main priority now. She deserved to hear his truths before anyone else. “And then I’m going to spend years in therapy because I apparently have anger issues.”

  Admitting it out loud wasn’t so bad.

  Hatch sniffled before turning back to the computer. “You’re going to be lucky if that asshole doesn’t sue you.”

  Drew had an answer for that. “I can assure you he won’t. I happen to have footage of that fucker basically trying to rape Carly. I won’t hesitate to ruin him with it if he comes after anyone in my family.”

  And that family now included Carly Fisher, who was going to find herself with a new last name soon if Bran had anything to say about it. Or maybe he’d find himself with one if she didn’t want to take his. It didn’t matter as long as they shared one.

  “Holy shit.” Hatch turned, his eyes wide. “We’ve got her.”

  “What?” Drew moved in behind Hatch. “On the murder?”

  Hatch shook his head and pointed to the screen. “No. I can’t find anything about the murder or any of the players. No mention of Castalano or Stratton or Francine. But this is a record of bribes she’s made to certain officials to look the other way when she pays her workers slave wages. This one is proof that she hires children under the age of ten to work in her overseas factories. Well, this is why she had that system hidden and not connected to the Internet. She had to keep proof of the payments to the officials, but she couldn’t let any of it get out. Holy hell. This will bring down her entire empire when we unleash this on the Web.” He frowned Bran’s way. “We are going to unleash this, right? You’re not all angelic and shit now, right?”

  Taking down the evil queen would be his pleasure. “Do it. But we do it the right way. We’re going to need a reporter. I think Carly might know one. And hey, since we�
�re no longer pursuing an investigation ourselves, Drew can finally admit to himself that he wants the hot reporter.”

  Drew turned a lovely shade of pink. “I don’t . . . She is very attractive in a symmetrical way. I don’t think she’s the right reporter for this. Unless . . .”

  His brother would never stop plotting. It was just his way. “I’m going to get my girl. Take down the security system in the guesthouse for me, brother. I have to go and set the scene. I have a lot to make up for. The good news is, I know how to make that woman happy.”

  It was something he intended to be an expert at.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Carly walked into the guesthouse and sighed as she locked the door. Hours and hours had gone by and she could finally take a breath. And figure out what she was going to do with the rest of her life.

  She’d gotten through the rest of the evening and managed to do the one thing she’d decided would be her parting gift to the Lawless clan. After Patricia had dismissed her with a disdainful sneer and told her to present herself in the morning to discuss how they would handle Carly’s unprofessionalism, Carly had snuck into the parlor again and when she’d walked out it was with Iris Lawless’s vase in her oversized handbag. She would present it to Drew as a good-bye gift to Bran.

  She’d put her earpiece back in at the end of the night and Drew had been there. He’d explained that they had what they needed. She was free.

  She was also alone.

  Should she have walked out with him? Should she call him and talk to him? Or should she accept that they couldn’t work?

  Or she could fight. Fight for him. Fight for them.

  She reached into her purse and grabbed her phone. His number was on speed dial. She heard it ring. Really ring. Like it-was-here-and-close-to-her ring.

  “Hey,” a familiar voice said. “You don’t have to call. I’m here.”

  Bran stepped out of the kitchen, a glass of wine in his hand. He was wearing nothing but a pair of jeans that rode low on his hips. He’d likely ditched the tux as soon as he could. She had to admit that while she liked how he looked all dressed up, he was devastating like this.

  “What are you doing here?”

  He stepped forward and held out the wine. “I think you need this, baby. As to your question, where else would I be?”

  She took the wine, but put it to the side. She might need it later because despite the fact that she was happy to see him, they couldn’t ignore what had happened. Bran seemed to think he could blow up and then forget about it. They couldn’t hide from it anymore. She loved him.

  God, she loved him and she had to risk him walking out on her because her love was important. It was meaningful and she needed him to work with her.

  “You said you were leaving.”

  He stepped in close, towering over her, but the look on his face was soft. “I knew I’d screwed up, Carly, and we had to make it look good for Patricia. I know I lost it and I apologize for how extreme it got, but you need to understand that I will not let anyone hurt you no matter what it costs me. I meant what I said. I love you.”

  The words warmed her, but they weren’t enough. “We can’t go on like this.”

  He cupped her face, tilting it up so she looked in his eyes. “I will see any therapist you want me to see. I will work on this. I’m going to do it with or without you. If you can’t be with me now, I’ll still go because I want to be the man you need me to be. I love you. You’re it for me and I’m going to talk to you about something that’s hard for me to talk about.”

  Hope filled her. “I want you to be able to say anything to me. I love you, too. If you’ll work on it, I’ll be with you. I’ll be with you every step of the way.”

  He leaned over and kissed her forehead. “Don’t say that until you’ve heard everything I have to say, baby. You might not feel the same way after you find out what I did. I was very selfish when I was younger.”

  She wrapped her arms around him, unable to think of a single thing he could have done that would cause her to walk away from the man he was now. “You told me your foster mom came on to you.”

  His hand smoothed down her back over and over, as though he found comfort in the contact. “She wasn’t actually my foster mom. She was the girlfriend of the man who ran the home. It wasn’t precisely a group home, but the man pretty much made his living off letting teenagers stay at his place. He was a bastard. Please don’t think that every place I stayed at was like that. It wasn’t. I put a lot of emphasis on it and I wonder if I shouldn’t now. I had a few people who took amazing care of me, and circumstance led to them having to let me go. I was also difficult, to say the least.”

  She understood that his childhood had been chaotic, with the ground always shifting beneath him. He’d had no stable home, no people to grab onto when the storm hit. That crappy trailer park had been filled with women who would feed her and Meri when their mom didn’t come home and men who would protect them. At the time it had seemed like such a terrible place to be, but she could see at least she’d had a family.

  “I was there for three months and I’d learned when to hide,” Bran continued. “If he brought home a bottle of Jack, I stayed out of his way. You followed his rules and he wasn’t half bad, but when he got to drinking he could get nasty.”

  “You couldn’t talk to your caseworker?” She didn’t understand how all of it worked.

  “I could have but by then I’d met Mandy and I didn’t want to get separated from her.”

  She should have known there was a girl involved. “You loved her?”

  “I did,” he said quietly. “She was pretty and smart and she was nice to me. We had plans. We were sixteen and we made plans to go to college together when we aged out. She didn’t have anyone on the outside so I decided she would come with me. Now that I look back at it, I think I was trying to change what had happened with me and Mia.”

  “Your sister?”

  He nodded. “We ran away from our first home together. We were so little. I thought if we could find Drew and Riley everything would be all right. I damn near killed us both and they separated us shortly after. I think I was replaying that moment. I think I do it a lot. I want to hold on to something. I want something to be constant and I thought it would be Mandy.”

  “But you ran away again.”

  “Yes. The woman . . . she would get me alone and flirt with me. I was a big guy even back then. I probably looked older than sixteen.”

  “Don’t. She knew how old you were, Bran. She was the adult. She was at fault.” She was not going to allow him to complicate a very simple situation.

  “She was at fault,” he said with a sigh. “She did know how old I was and I never encouraged her. It made me uncomfortable. I didn’t want to be in that position. She tried to kiss me one night and I pushed her away. She said she was going to tell her boyfriend I came on to her and he would take care of me.”

  “That’s when you decided to run.”

  “No one would believe me. I was sick of being in a corner. Mandy wouldn’t let me go alone. I guess we were stupid and thought it would be romantic. At that point I wasn’t even thinking about going to Drew. I was going to leave everything behind. All of it. Just me and her on the road.” A shudder went through him. “We didn’t last a night.”

  She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the rest, but Bran needed to say it. “What happened?”

  “We snuck out early in the evening. All we had between us was some stolen food and a couple of bottles of water and some money Drew managed to get to me. He would get me anything he could and at that point he didn’t have much. He was starting his business and putting Riley through college. He worked two jobs and Riley worked as well and they passed me whatever cash they could. I had to hide it. Someone was always stealing, but at that point I had saved up about a hundred bucks.”

  How hard had t
hat been for him to do? Even though she’d never had a lot of money, she’d spent what she had on candy and childish luxuries. Bran had none of those. “Where did you stay?”

  “We walked for a long time. I thought I knew where the bus depot was, but I got turned around. I kept waiting for the police to show up. That’s the difference between an eight-year-old and a six-year-old running away and two teenagers going missing. No one really cares about the teens. It’s what you realize in the system. You seem to lose your value as you age. Every year puts more distance between you and the idea of a real home. That’s why Mandy and I thought we could make it. Anyway, it got late and it was getting cold. I wanted to get a motel room, but they wouldn’t rent to under-eighteens. So we ended up at an abandoned house on the edge of the city.”

  “Were you alone? Was it really abandoned?”

  “We thought it was,” he said. “We bunked down in one of the back rooms, but sometime in the middle of the night another group showed up. We didn’t realize it was used for drug parties.”

  “It was a crack house?”

  “Of sorts. I woke up in the middle of the night when someone crashed in. He was high as a kite. I don’t know that he had any idea what he was doing. He started hitting me and then there were two of them. They beat the shit out of me and then Mandy tried to stop them. I didn’t save her.” He took in a ragged breath. “I laid there on the floor and one of them pushed her and she hit her head and she didn’t get up.”

  Her heart ached for him. “Bran, that’s not your fault.”

  “She was there because of me and I wasn’t strong enough to save her. She was there because I couldn’t suck it up and do what I needed to do to keep us both safe. Why couldn’t I do it? Do you know how many boys at that age would have taken what that woman offered?”

  How hard had the last few weeks been on him? To be placed in the same situation with a woman who had power over him had to have been torture for Bran. She looked up at him. “You had the right to say no.”