“It’s nice to hear you’re alive after all.”
It was the twelfth call I’d taken over the past three weeks from business partners who had found out that Evelyn Colello’s son was alive after all. Business partners who had worked with my mother, half of whom had never sold her share, and it was mine to claim if I wanted in. The other six had been bought out, and a team of lawyers was accounting for the loss of those shares right now.
“Bad time?”
Lifting my head, seeing Peter in my door, I said good-bye to the newest business partner I’d found out about that morning and hung up the phone. “Come in.”
Peter glanced around, holding two coffees in hand. “I heard you were using the Naveah office. This your ‘daytime’ office?”
I motioned to his extra coffee. “That for me?”
“It is. Black. Plain. Boring.” Peter pretended to wince as he handed it over, then he took a seat on the other side of my desk. He finished scanning the room. “Your dad used to use your other office, back when he and I were the majority holders at Phoenix Tech, before everything got big.”
And “got big” was an understatement. They grew that company to be one of the leading companies in cyber security. My father went on to lead the business end while Peter took over the computer end. It’d been a match made in heaven. And he was right. I’d taken to using my dad’s old office at Phoenix Tech headquarters a week ago.
Taking my coffee, I sipped it and waited.
Peter came. Peter never came without a reason.
He sighed, looked at me, and there it was. The reason. He reached behind him and pulled out a file he’d stuck in the back of his pants. It was an odd habit, but he did it often over the years.
I noted, “Briefcases can be used as weapons, too.”
He shrugged. “You know I hate those things.”
Not unless there was a computer in it. His photographic memory wasn’t the only thing he’d given his daughter. Both needed their computers on hand or they felt naked. They got twitchy, anxious, and the second you gave them a laptop, both settled down. It was uncanny.
“What am I going to see when I read this over?” I skimmed through the papers. “This is an order of protection.”
He nodded, sipping his coffee. “Against your grandfather, on behalf of my family. My entire family. That’s the summary of all the orders.”
Okay.
I tossed the papers on my desk and sat back, studying him more squarely.
His eyes twitched, enlarging before he clamped down. “What?”
He was guarded now. Good.
“What are you doing?”
“What?”
“What are you doing?”
“With what? I’m helping. I know you have a lot on your hands.”
“Have you checked in with Matt?”
He frowned, his eyebrows dipping again. “Did something happen?”
“He was on a bender recently.” I’d reported this to him, or had my team report to Peter’s team. I knew he would be notified, and I was now seeing that he didn’t listen or read his team’s reports.
“He was?” He jerked forward in his seat. “Did something happen? Is he okay?”
“He was on a bender.”
“You just said. Did you stop him?”
“Why would I?”
This was what I’d been worried about. I was at a crossroads, and I had to choose.
Bailey. Her face on the sidewalk as my grandfather pulled up. That image flashed in my mind.
I chose.
“You’re fucking up.”
Peter flinched, his head snapping back.
I kept on. “You are my superior with age, with years, with expertise in your field, but you are completely fucking up when it comes to your family.”
Peter closed down. A nerve was ticking out.
I’d pissed him off. I was about to piss him off more.
I leaned forward in my seat, knowing my eyes were dead as I delivered the rest to him. I should care, but fucking hell, I couldn’t.
“You are not grasping that things have changed. I am no longer in charge of watching your family. Matt is fucking up. He went on a bender. He hasn’t done that in weeks. If I were to guess, I’d think it has something to do with Quinn.” Peter stiffened at her name. I ignored it. “I know you are sleeping with Bailey’s mother again, and Bailey knows this.”
His mouth slackened. “She does?”
“I don’t think Bailey’s talked to her mother about it. I don’t know if Bailey even has an opinion on it. She was almost kidnapped, four weeks ago. She refused counseling two weeks after. She started school a week later, and since starting school she’s been targeted by my grandfather twice and has been targeted by one of her classmates for the sole reason that her father is Peter Francis.”
“What?” He jerked forward. His hands dug into the chair.
“I get reports from the security teams. I get reports from all of your accountants. All of them. I get reports from your assistants. I get reports from your publicity team. I get fucking reports from everyone, and in the middle of all of that, I am finding out about another company my mother was running in secret, once every second day. I am also spearheading a war against my grandfather, and this is a battle that you don’t seem to give one shit about.” I rested my arms on the desk. “You should give a shit about it. He comes in and wins, I’m dead.”
Peter winced. Again.
I ignored it. Again. “He comes in and wins, Bailey is dead, or worse.” His face closed up, and I was content to let him sit on that, think on that. “It’s not escaped anyone’s attention you shipped Marie off for an extended vacation. Why?”
He didn’t answer, his face shifting away.
“Peter.”
He remained quiet.
“On Matt’s bender, he had breakfast at the estate. He noticed, even while drinking. He went to Hawking and shared his revelation with Bailey. She shared with me. She’s gone back to the house, something I know she’s in turmoil about, because she wants to see her little brother and sister but she does not want to see a Quinn look-alike there, and especially one standing in the back and lurking.”
Now Peter looked up. His nostrils flared. “Payton does not lurk.”
Why those nostrils flared on that point was something I would tuck away and turn over later. “She makes Bailey uncomfortable, and because I know the second reason for your visit, I’m just going to give you my report. Your daughter is still struggling. She loves school, something I’m assuming you understand, but she’s not keeping it together. She’s acting like she is. She’s convinced herself she is. She’s not, and it is killing me that I am unable to give her the attention she needs from me.”
Those nostrils had calmed, and his Adam’s apple moved up and down before he coughed to clear his throat. He ran a hand down his tie, then leaned forward in his seat. “Those restraining orders are a wake-up call.”
I sat back. “Restraining orders won’t do shit against my grandfather.”
“But they’re paperwork. Paperwork is—”
“Not currency my grandfather adheres to. He is in bed with corrupt government leaders. He’s here. He’s attempting to battle me in old-school ways, buying up shares in companies he thinks I want, trying to get shares of companies you and I both own. He’s trying to get to Bailey for the mere fact to scare her. He has not clued in, either, that I’m not playing that way. I am taking a page from Bailey’s playbook.”
Interest sparked in his gaze.
“I’m letting him underestimate me, but there’ll be a time where he realizes he’s losing. He’ll get angry and he’ll explode. I’m trying to cover all bases so when he does explode, everyone I love is safe.”
Peter let my words sink in.
I hated this. It made my stomach churn. He had helped raise me, but there were facets of Peter that were not there. Being monogamous and being proactive in areas outside of technology were two that he struggled with. It was unfair of me to expect him to know how to physically disarm an attacker or, if need be, to pick up their gun and shoot them in the head with it. I wasn’t asking that of him.
He let out a deep sigh. “What do you need from me?”
“I need you to be a father.”
His eyelids shuttered. He looked as if I’d struck him.
“Check in with Matt. That bender happened for a reason. Make it right with him. Check in with your daughter. She needs a father right now, and I know she’s walling off her mother, and I haven’t approached that topic with her yet. I looked into her schedule. She overloaded herself so she would finish within twelve months.”
“What? That’s too much, even for her.”
“Exactly. Figure out why, and tell me.” Though I had a strong guess as to why. “Then help her as her father. She just got you. Let her actually have you.”
He gestured to my computer, my desk. “Is there anything else I can help with?”
I wheeled back my chair, but just watched him.
He waited.
“When I have reports sent to you, read them or listen to them and move on them. I send them to you for a reason.”
He let that digest before clipping his head up and down. “Got it. You sent another one over this morning. I’ll listen to it on the way to check in with Matthew.”
That was it.
He came.
He tried to help.
I schooled him on how he wasn’t helping. And now we would see if he did.
Now he left.
If I were to guess, I wouldn’t be surprised if Bailey shared that she got a surprise call or visit from her father.
My phone rang.
“Yeah?”
“Kashton?”
This was a call I never wanted to take.
“Victoria.”
She was hesitant, but then asked, “Can we meet for lunch? There’s something I need to talk to you about. About … about your grandfather.”
I looked at my screen, seeing the latest report that one of my private investigators had sent me. It was the amount her grandfather was in debt to my grandfather, but I highly doubted this was what she wanted to talk to me about.
With that, I knew what I would do, and I knew I wouldn’t tell Bailey, and I could only hope it didn’t come back to bite me in the ass.
“Sure.”