“This is not fuckin’ happening,” Roark said, his voice strained as he dragged a hand down his face. “Not again.”
Ridge didn’t speak. He couldn’t. Instead, he moved toward his bar, pulled out a glass and poured his favorite bourbon almost to the rim. His hand was steady as he gripped the glass, brought it up to his lips and took a slow gulp. Then another. And another.
His head throbbed, the couple of aspirins he’d agreed to in the emergency room weren’t working. Then again, they’d offered him something stronger and he’d refused. The doctors had also wanted to keep him overnight for observation. He’d refused that as well. And so had Talaya. Now at a little after eight in the morning, they were both at home. In a house full of people instead of resting as the medical staff had instructed.
“This is some bullshit,” Slay, Ridge’s closest male friend and the manager of The Corporation Kensington said. “A car just doesn’t drive itself. How in the hell did they not find a driver on the scene?”
“It was four in the morning, who the hell is out at that time anyway?” Roark continued. “And the police showing up at the hospital wanting to do breathalyzer tests on everyone just because they heard the name Donovan! What the hell? They were the ones hit by a damn runaway car!”
Ridge wanted to rub his temples. He wanted to get into the lift and go upstairs to crawl in bed beside Talaya. He wanted to hold her all day and into the night because for the second time in way too short of a timeframe, he’d almost lost her. He took another swallow before looking across his reception room to the people who’d shown up at the hospital and subsequently followed them home.
Roark stood near the couch, his hands going from running down his face to being clenched into fists at his side. His older brother, who was normally the calmer one of the siblings, was visibly upset. The dark jeans and gray t-shirt he’d most likely pulled on in haste after receiving the call about the accident, weren’t wrinkled or in disarray, but they were out of the norm for Roark who was usually always in business mode.
Slay, whom Ridge hadn’t seen much in the past months as his friend had been either traveling with his new girlfriend, Willow, who also happened to be Talaya’s best friend, or working at the club, was in sweats and a hoodie since Sundays were normally his off days. Since Ridge and Talaya only visited the club once a month, he didn’t have as much time as he used to, to drop by Slay’s office to shoot the shit. Willow was a rising star in the music industry and Slay, who was just as new to this monogamous relationship game as Ridge was, understandably wanted to stick close to his woman. That meant, the Saturday night poker games that Slay used to be a regular for, had often left his spot at the table to be filled by Ridge’s cousin, Dane, when he was in town. Truthfully, with all the players, except for Pierce, either married or in committed relationships, lately those card games had been rescheduled more times than he could count.
This morning, Slay sat on the second couch in the room, legs spread as he leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. He’d turned on the television so that the news was now playing at a low volume. There had been a lot of members of the press at the hospital, so much so that Sage, Dino, and Jaheem had circled around Ridge and Talaya as they took the service elevator down to the basement and were ushered out a back door. The head of Team Donovan security was Que, Roark’s guard. Dino had been following behind the SUV Sage drove with Ridge and Talaya in the back. No doubt he’d called Que from the scene along with other members of the team that showed up at the hospital. The only thing Ridge remembered clearly about those first few moments after the accident, had been scrambling over the seat to get to Talaya.
One minute she’d been laying on his shoulder, both of them dozing off after the marathon sex at The Corporation and their decision—which he was now second guessing the hell out of—to go home instead of spending the night there. In the next moments, there was screaming, the cringe-worthy sound of metal crashing into metal and then a deathly silence. Neither he nor Talaya had been wearing seatbelts and they both had been tossed around by the collision. Talaya had been lying crumpled on the passenger side floor when he’d found her. His ears had been ringing, head throbbing like someone had tried to split it open with a hammer, but he’d had to find her before he could do anything else. Needed to know that she was all right before he could start to figure out what the hell had happened.
“Pierce better get here soon and he better have some answers,” Roark was saying, the worry etched in his deep voice pulling Ridge from his thoughts.
“He’s on his way,” Sage said from where she stood guard at the entrance to the room. There was a bandage on the right side of her forehead and red cuts over the rest of her face and down her neck where she’d been hit by shattered glass from the windshield. If the scowl on her face wasn’t message enough that she was pissed, the wary stance she held—legs spread, arms folded over her chest—as she positioned her body to block anyone she didn’t want entering the room, and the cold edge to her tone said it all.
She’d apologized a dozen times. From the moment she’d gotten out of the truck and come back to yank Ridge’s door open, to the second he and she were alone in Talaya’s room. She was blaming herself for what happened to them when Ridge had already stated it wasn’t her fault. Whoever had hit them was totally to blame. And that person was, unfortunately, now in the wind.
Again, Ridge desperately wanted to rub his temples but he knew that wasn’t going to soothe the pain that sliced through his skull. Nothing but that driver’s head on a platter would give him any relief at the moment.
“We should call the Seniors,” Roark said. “I don’t want them to hear about this on the news. Aunt Beverly won’t be happy if that’s how she finds out.”
“No,” Ridge finally spoke. “She won’t.” He didn’t want to worry his aunt or any of the Seniors in their family for that matter, but he knew Roark was right. They needed to get ahead of the press. Which is why he wasn’t surprised when he heard a slight commotion from the foyer and then saw Que ushering Neshawn in.
“What the entire hell?” she asked before crossing the room to stop in front of Ridge. “I send you off to a glamorous party looking ahhhmazing and you come back looking like you’ve been run over by a freight train.”
Ridge took another gulp of his drink, emptying the glass. “Not true. If I’d been run over by a freight train, I’d be dead.”
“That’s not funny,” Neshawn continued. “Are you alright? Where’s Talaya? How is she? Why did I have to wake up and see this news on the television?”
“Maybe we take one question at a time, Neshawn,” Roark said and came to stand beside her. “Roya’s brewing tea and we’re waiting for Pierce to get here with an update on the accident, so come on over here and have a seat with the rest of us.”
Neshawn kept her gaze on Ridge, who had begun to fix himself another drink. He didn’t have a new response for her and wasn’t even going to try to come up with one.
“I want to see Talaya. Where is she? Is she still in the hospital? The news reported you were both released,” Neshawn continued to rattle on. Roark had taken her elbow and escorted her to the couch situated directly across from the matching one where Slay sat, but she wouldn’t sit down.
“She’s upstairs resting,” Ridge told her.
“Alone? You left her alone at a time like this?” Neshawn asked, her brow furrowed.
Ridge stopped with his newly refilled glass halfway to his lips. “Willow and Suri are with her.”
“Then I should probably go up there too,” she said but Ridge was already shaking his head.
“No.” His tone was stern, his gaze intent on her. “Her friends have her for now. When I’m done down here, I’ll go be with her.”
“But—”
“But nothing,” he continued. “I don’t want you in her face telling her what’s best for our reputation right now. We’re going to figure out what’s going on and how best to handle it in the media. She doesn’t have to be a part of this.” Her being a part of this was exactly why Ridge was trying to hold back his rage right now. While he’d assured Sage it wasn’t her fault, he readily harbored enough blame of his own.
Earlier tonight she’d referred to them being all over social media and how she hadn’t expected so much coverage of them. He had because that’s what his life had always been like. Not that the UK branch of the Donovans always did things to keep them in the news, but there was no denying they were one of the wealthiest Black families in London, and that alone garnered a certain amount of media chatter. Add to that the international connections the family name had through their different business ventures, and he’d had to become adept at dealing with the press. Had to get used to his picture popping up in tabloids, magazines and even newspapers.
Talaya had also grown up in a spotlight, one that was vastly different from his and now that he was responsible for putting her in this place again, he wanted to shield her as much as possible.
“Fine,” Neshawn said and then plopped down onto the couch a couple of feet away from Slay. “I can schedule a press conference for later this afternoon. Roark you can do the talking, but Ridge you and Suri should definitely be there.”
“No press conferences,” Ridge said adamantly and finished his second glass of bourbon of the morning. Yes, it was definitely still morning. The ticker running along the bottom of the television gave news highlights as well as the weather and time, while reporters covered the issues of the day. It wasn’t even nine o’clock yet but it seemed like he’d been going all day long without a moment’s rest. “I said I wasn’t doing any more press conferences after I had to do the ones about the families involved in the explosion.”
And that had been hell since most of the families despised him and his family, regardless of how big of a settlement Donovan Oilwell UK had bestowed upon them.
“I’ll do it alone,” Roark said. “Ridge and Talaya have been doing the bulk of the press since Tamika delivered the baby, but it’s time for me to get back into action.”
Ridge had been wondering how long it would take his brother to get out of the new fatherhood haze and return to being the totally focused workaholic Ridge and everyone else knew him as.
Neshawn pressed her red painted lips together in a tight line. “I guess that will work.” She reached into the bag she carried and pulled out a tablet. Before he could say another word, she had the tablet open and propped up on her lap. “I’ll just shoot an email over to my contacts at the local stations. Then I’ll hit up the radio stations so they can link into as well.”
“I sure hope you have something more to tell the media than what we know so far,” Slay said and earned a sharp glance from Neshawn.
“We’re going to control the narrative,” she told him.
Roark nodded. “Yeah, that’s exactly what we need to do.”
“What somebody in here needs to do is tell me what the hell is going on.”
All eyes went to the doorway once again as the woman who’d made that statement slowly walked into the room.
“Aunt Birdie.” Roark acknowledged her first and hurried across the room to relieve the guard who had been standing on her right side.
Another guard was on her left, both of them had been holding her by the elbow as she took one step at a time.
“Why didn’t you call?” Roark asked. “One of us would’ve come to get you if we’d known you wanted to come out.”
“Don’t lie, Roark. It’s beneath you,” his aunt snapped. “That little hellion you call a sister left me home on purpose. I heard her moving about at that insulting hour of the morning and I knew it wasn’t because she was getting ready for work. She works from home most mornings. And she hadn’t been out last night. We had dinner together and played cards until she grew tired of me beating her.”
They were near the couches now. His aunt dressed in a cream-colored pantsuit, two long strands of pearls at her neck, matching earrings at her ears. On most of her fingers were the silver and diamond rings she always wore, while a gold chain strap held a matching cream-colored box-size purse at her side.
“Ridgley,” she called to him the moment Roark and the guard had helped get her situated on the couch. “Come over here and let me look at you.”
“I’m fine, Aunt Birdie,” he said but wisely began making his way over to where she sat. When he was close enough, he leaned in to kiss his aunt on the cheek.
She sniffed and reached up her hands to clasp his face and hold it in front of her. “On your way to drunk, from what I can smell.”
“Better tell Roya to put on a pot of coffee as well,” Neshawn said from behind him.
“Is that how this accident happened?” Aunt Birdie continued as if she hadn’t heard Neshawn speak. “You were in your cups and got behind the wheel?” She shook her head and sucked her teeth. “That’s something I would’ve expected from you when you were a teenager, but you’re an adult now. About to be married. You cannot be out here endangering your life, Talaya’s life, or anyone else’s.”
Ridge eased out of her grasp in what he could manage to be as respectful a way as possible. “I wasn’t driving,” he told her as he stood up straight. “And I hadn’t been drinking at the time.”
Aunt Birdie’s heavily penciled in brows arched. “Then what the hell happened? All I saw on the news was a banged-up truck. They said you and Talaya were in that one. The car was pretty messed up too, caught fire, did it?” She huffed. “Is somebody going to tell me what the hell happened or do I have to go down to the police department to find out for myself?”
Somebody, most likely everybody in the room, was thinking the exact same thing Ridge was. That if Aunt Birdie would just be quiet long enough for someone to talk; she might learn what happened. Luckily for him, Pierce picked this exact moment to arrive.
Ridge’s house felt like a revolving door with people mostly coming in like it was open to the public. He took solace in the fact that he knew Que and his guys were at the door and outside making sure they knew exactly who they were letting in. There was no doubt some of the media had followed them home.
The room seemed too small, even though Ridge knew it was more than big enough for this small circle of people. He really just wanted them to all go. He wanted there to be quiet so he could think, so he could figure out what steps he needed to take next to protect Talaya. She was his priority in all of this. If anything happened to her because he hadn’t been diligent enough, focused enough on her, or simply strong enough to keep her safe, he didn’t know what he’d do.
“Everybody’s gonna want to take a seat for this,” Pierce said as he entered the room.
At that exact moment, the lift opened and Suri stepped out. She wore very short shorts and a too tight t-shirt that Ridge hoped like hell she’d been wearing in the house when she got the call and hadn’t wanted to take the time to put on real clothes before coming out. Either way his teeth clenched at the sight of his little sister bearing way more skin than he found acceptable as she too walked into the reception room.
“Amir texted me to let me know he was outside with the rest of the team,” Suri said walking right past where Pierce had stopped a couple steps from both couches, and moved around until she could sit down next to Aunt Birdie. “You should’ve stayed at home. I was going to bring you the news once I had all the details.”
Aunt Birdie rolled her eyes. “You shouldn’t have left me there like I was a toddler who needed a babysitter. This is family business and I should be here to get the news firsthand. After all, I’m the matriarch now.”
That she was. Aunt Birdie was the oldest living Donovan female by blood and not marriage, at the moment. She was, for all intent and purposes, the head of the entire family and she had no problem reminding them of that fact.
“Well, this handsome guy here was just about to fill us all in on the details,” Neshawn said as she sat back on the couch and crossed one leg over the other. She wore a knee-length hunter green skirt and some strappy nude color heels, but with the motion of her leg, that skirt went up just a couple inches and Pierce followed it.
“Then get on with it why don’t you,” Suri snapped.
Ridge did rub his temples now because the pain was becoming excruciating and the noise almost to the point of unbearable. But he had to hear what Pierce wanted to say.
Pierce had raised a brow as he’d turned his attention to Suri, but after a few seconds of total silence in the room, he cleared his throat. “For the sake of brevity and to give Ms. Donovan all the details I’m sure she wants, I’ll provide the facts and save the discussion for afterwards.”
“Good,” Ridge said trying not to sound too stern or impatient. “Give us the facts.”
Pierce nodded and began to speak as if he were giving an official briefing to one of his superiors at Interpol. “At four seventeen a.m. a white 2019 Mercedes CLA-Class entered the intersection of Gordan Place and Pitt Street at a high rate of speed. During that same time, a charcoal gray Bentayga entered the same intersection and that vehicle slammed into the passenger side of the Mercedes. Behind the Bentayga was a black Range Rover driven by Delonte Jackson, whom you all know as Dino. The Bentayga was driven by…”
“Me,” Sage spoke up. “I was driving the first truck with Ridge and Talaya in it.”
She looked at Ridge with sad eyes then and he frowned. The act only increased his pain level but he was trying to convey to her once again that she had no reason to feel guilty, because he knew that was the only reason she’d interjected.
“Yes,” Pierce said with a nod. “You, navigating in your duties as lead guard to Ridge, were operating the vehicle that collided with the Mercedes.” Pierce folded his arms across his chest. “When medical help and law enforcement arrived on the scene only Sage, Ridge, Talaya, and Delonte were at the scene. The driver of the Mercedes had fled.”
“Bastard,” Aunt Birdie murmured and pursed her lips.
“Do we know who the driver was?” Roark asked. “Why’d he drive out into that intersection when Sage had the right of way?”
Pierce nodded. “We’ll have to wait another couple of hours to get the camera footage from the private homes in that area and the city surveillance, but I know it will corroborate Sage’s statement that her light was green and she had the right of way to proceed through the intersection.”
Roark nodded. “So, like I said, why did this…whoever it was drive through the intersection? Were they drunk? Was there any evidence of drinking in his car?”
“The car caught fire about forty minutes after everyone was taken to the hospital. Two officers were injured and the press got it all on camera,” Pierce said. “But not before I had my guys in place on the scene and they checked the vehicle out.”
Both Que and Sage would’ve known to contact Pierce. In addition to being a former FBI profiler and now an agent with Interpol, he was a close family friend who’d been on hand for the last few crises they’d experienced.
“My man,” Ridge said with a very slow, and very stiff nod of his head.
Pierce met his gaze. “Hold that thought,” he said. “My guy pulled the VIN number and we traced it. The owner of the vehicle is listed as Cordell DuPont.”
“Shit,” Ridge cursed and then took a step toward Pierce. “Shit.” He put his hands up to cover his face and then sighed before dragging them down. “Shit!”
“DuPont,” Sage said, her voice quiet as she made her way closer to where Ridge now stood. “As in the couple that came to see you last year. Michelle DuPont who we have on camera as being at the holiday party year before last.”
Ridge looked at her. “The DuPonts who fell off the grid after that meeting so we were never able to figure out what the hell they were doing in my office in the first place,” he said.
“And that’s not all,” Pierce added.
This couldn’t get any worse. How could Ridge be any more to blame for this happening than having those two in his office, in his grasp, but letting them go? He had told them to get out of his office. He’d let them walk away, only for them to turn around and do…what? What had this accident been about? And who the hell were these people?
“I told you last year that we traced the DuPonts’s business back to someone named Edward DeWayne Ewing. Well, when we did a preliminary search on the guy, I found out that Ewing is a part of a conglomerate of sorts, owning and running a variety of entities from that exploration company where the DuPonts work to a couple of banks, some restaurants and three major construction companies. Because everything looked business related, and Cade and I got a lead on the Brennan Cult multi-agency task force we put this on the back burner for a minute. The priority of course, being trying to get all those deranged killers who’d attempted to recruit Talaya off the streets.”
Ridge couldn’t argue with that last statement. Pierce and Cade had both been good at keeping him informed about the status of that particular investigation.
“But,” Pierce continued, “in his spare time, one of our analysts started following the money that went in and out of Ewing’s holdings. They watched how money from the smaller companies circled back to Ewing and zeroed in specifically on where the large sums of money that were going into those smaller holdings originated from. You are not going to believe who the hell these people are connected to.”
“Who?” Roark asked before Ridge could form the question.
“In the late twenties, early thirties, they were known as the Moonshine Boys, a bunch of gangsters who added millions of dollars to their other racketeering operations by bootlegging and running thousands of speakeasies from Houston to a few other spots in the southeastern part of the States.” Pierce held up a hand to keep anyone from asking the obvious question, which was—what the hell did any of this have to do with them presently?
“Edward DeWayne Ewing is actually a third. He’s the son of Eddie Ewing, Jr., who was the son of Eddie Ewing, III, one of the original Moonshine Boys. Eddie the third apparently learned from his father and grandfather because he and his partner Warren Madrid now run the notorious MB Mafia in the States.”
“Shit,” Slay said. “I’ve heard of them. Knew a sports agent who got caught up owing them some money for his coke habit, then tried to repay them by betting on a few championship football games. He had his clients throw the games as a favor for getting their family members cars, homes, and shit like that. When he got caught, the MBs had his throat slit in jail and his body cut up and put in one of the industrial dryers in the laundry room. Then they burned his house down to further send the message to anybody who knew they were linked to the scandal, that they better keep the mafia’s name out of their mouths.”
Neshawn gasped, a hand going to her chest as she tried to process all that she’d heard. Ridge wasn’t so sure she should’ve been present for this debriefing, but it was too late to consider that now. And if she was going to continue managing their image through this mess, it made sense that she knew everything that was going on.
“Do y’all have some tea?” Aunt Birdie asked out of the blue.
His aunt had been uncharacteristically quiet as she’d listened to everything Pierce had to say. She hadn’t even chastised Ridge for his cursing, something she’d always done regardless of how old he was. Nor had she chastised Slay because Aunt Birdie was as old school as they came; she didn’t give a damn whose child you were, if you were wrong, she was going to correct you.
“See, I knew this was going to be too much for you,” Suri said. She came to a stand and then looped her arm through Aunt Birdie’s to help her stand. “We can go into the kitchen and get you some tea. And you probably need to eat. I know you didn’t get anything before you left.”
“We’re supposed to have brunch today,” Aunt Birdie said when she was finally standing straight up. With her free hand she wiped down the front of her clothes then looked directly at Ridge. “You go on upstairs and lay down with Talaya. Y’all can sleep until I get Paisley over here to help Roya start preparing the brunch. We all need to eat and we all need to be together.”
“I’ve got some documents I need you to see,” Pierce said to Ridge.
“Not today,” Aunt Birdie said, her tone curt and final. “Today is for our family brunch and for giving thanks to the good Lord for keeping Ridge and Talaya through that ordeal.” She took a step with Suri right by her side. “We need to thank Him for keeping all of us, for all this time.”
Nobody said another word until Aunt Birdie was out of the room and even then, there were a few more tense moments before Ridge spoke. “Neshawn, schedule the press conference for tomorrow. Sage, I want you and Dino to get with all of our in-house security and assign new details. I don’t want Talaya alone for one second when she’s out of this house. I want two guards on her at all times, in the same vehicle as she is and one in her office while she’s working. Review her schedule this afternoon and make sure wherever she has to go is a secure location. Vet everybody who’s going to be around her.”
Sage nodded. “Got it.”
“And coordinate with Que so he knows what Talaya and Ridge’s schedules are as well. I’ll take care of tightening up Suri and Aunt Birdie’s details as well as Tamika’s,” Roark said.
“And yours,” Ridge added. He didn’t want any of his family hurt behind whatever the hell was going on. If a muthafucka was bold enough to run a car into them, he was capable of anything and Ridge planned to be ready. And if somehow all this shit was connected to a ninety-year-old mafia, they had a bigger problem than any of them had ever imagined.
“All good ideas,” Pierce said. “And although I may be a grown ass man, fluent in five languages, with a long list of unmentionable things I’ve done on behalf of protecting the citizens of the United States and now the United Kingdom, I’m not about to cross your aunt today, or any other day. I’ll make sure all these documents are sent to you through a secure server and we can set up a time to meet in your office tomorrow to go over them.”
Roark stood with one hand in the front pocket of his pants. “That’s a good idea. Copy me on that email. I’ll go call Tamika and tell her that brunch is going to be here today.”
“And I’ll go collect my woman so we can get out of y’all hair,” Slay said when he stood and came over to clap Ridge on the shoulder.
Ridge gave his friend a weak smile. “You’re just scared of Aunt Birdie.”
Slay shook his head. “No lies told there, my brotha. No lies at all.”
Now, Ridge did laugh even though inside he wanted to rage. He wanted to lash out and punch somebody. To punch Cordell DuPont and whoever ordered him to target his family. He wanted to use his hands, his strength and yeah, his brains, to do whatever he could to keep his family safe.