2

As soon as the elevator doors shut, Will was alone with the clamoring voices in his thoughts. He heard his mother’s plea: “Family first. Promise me.”

He heard his father: “Always do the right thing. But know when it’s time to fight and when it’s time to back away. Listen to that still small voice.”

So Will had listened and done what he knew was right. Eric Sandstrom, the CEO of American Frontier, the most powerful oil company in the world, had played his dark trump card in the sunshine of Washington Square Park and thought he had Will trapped. Will had acquiesced to the demands of Sandstrom’s lawyer lackey, for now.

Will had no explanation for what he’d seen in the photo Jason Carson showed him—Sean sitting with a shady character in a bar. A man now identified as the Polar Bear Bomber. But Will knew what that photo, if released, would mean to the public. Sean Worthington, billionaire trust-fund playboy who usually sported the latest up-and-coming model on his arm at black-tie events, was somehow involved with the bombing of the American Frontier building—the biggest domestic terrorist incident of the past 20 years.

The timing couldn’t be worse—right in the middle of the oil spill fracas, with Sean center stage in chartering a boat that had taken him, Green Justice’s Kirk Baldwin, and New York Times reporter Jon Gillibrand into the icy Arctic waters as firsthand observers. Green Justice had pulled gutsy maneuvers before, but never something colossally stupid and life-threatening, like bombing a building.

Sure, Sean colored outside the lines at times, but Will had never known his younger brother to step outside any moral or ethical boundaries. Still, there was a first time for everything, and maybe Sean’s departure from the norm had been caught on camera. The photo—or, most likely, photos—going viral would not only ruin Sean in the business world, tarnish the reputation of Green Justice, and put Jon in the hot seat with his feisty boss, but it would bring the entire Worthington family under scrutiny. Will couldn’t let that happen. He’d been playing the role of his brother’s and sister’s protector for as long as he could remember. With their father traveling and in meetings as they grew up, his siblings had turned to Will, as much as they hated to admit it. He’d gotten them out of more trouble than he ever wanted their parents to know about. So he’d done what he’d needed to do to keep that photo from going viral. At Carson’s “request,” Will had stepped out of the Senate race to protect his family—most of all Sean.

Drew Simons, the Worthington family’s financial advisor, had been right as usual. He’d reported that Sandstrom was worried Will would use every opportunity to beat up on American Frontier during his Senate campaign. So the hot-under-the-collar Sandstrom had pinpointed the three billionaire sibling heirs as the key to solving his dilemmas, Drew said. After all, Sarah was calling the shots on the Department of Justice’s criminal negligence case and had investigators actively digging for dirt on AF. Add to that her friend Darcy Wiggins, a Department of Homeland Security agent, coming to conclusions that would blow AF sky-high as a company, and Sarah was a formidable opponent. Sean was too. Not only was he an eyewitness to the oil spill, but his ecological biodiversity NGO was talking about billions in damages if they could prove how much oil was gushing from the bottom of the ocean and the toppled AF platform. Then there was Will, former board member, who had crippled AF by selling the Worthington shares and then joining the shareholder lawsuit.

“Knock out the Worthington kids, and he thinks his problems are solved,” Drew had warned. “He told Jason Carson he wanted to tie up loose ends for good . . . kill three birds with one stone.”

Unfortunately, Drew hadn’t been able to uncover any specifics of Sandstrom’s plan before that day in Washington Square Park.

Will now knew about the plan firsthand. But he also wasn’t going down without a fight. He hated bullies, and Carson was a bully. Worse, he was an underhanded slimeball who didn’t care how dirty his hands got. He’d been rewarded for it throughout his career. Will wasn’t about to go on record as one of the good people Carson brought down, nor would he allow his family to be thrust into the harsh limelight Carson was capable of generating.

His wife, Laura, understood his last-minute decision. That he knew from their brief exchange of glances when she and their oldest child, Andrew, had arrived home from the Senate launch event. Approval glimmered in her eyes, as well as a challenge. So what’s next, Will? she seemed to be saying.

Yes, Laura knew him well. She grasped the stakes of why he’d backed down—the secret he was trying to keep under wraps. She understood his love for his family, his fierce protectiveness of his brother, and his steely determination that they not be hurt by what his mother, Ava, had revealed to him on the shores of Lake Chautauqua outside their family summer home. A stunning, devastating truth that only Will, his mother, and Laura now knew.

But Laura doesn’t know the rest of it, Will thought wryly. When she hears what Carson pulled today . . . A chuckle escaped, the first in his intense day, as he pictured the scene. His slender, hazel-eyed wife was a straight shooter and called things as she saw them. She was a force to be reckoned with in her own right when her loved ones were in someone’s sights.

Will sobered, recalling the confusion on his son’s face. No words had been exchanged. Andrew, who had Laura’s dark brown hair, lean frame, and hazel eyes, studied Will a minute, then embraced him a trifle longer than usual before padding up the stairs toward his room. Somehow the solemn Andrew, almost 13, understood a momentous event had played out. He was so like Will—serious, hardworking, hard on himself, and learning too early the high price of wealth and fame—that Will worried at times. Yet someday Andrew would assume the mantle of Worthington firstborn heir, and he needed to be prepared.

As the elevator doors opened, Will adjusted his focus. The Jason Carsons and Eric Sandstroms of the world would not win—not on Will’s watch. He had plans to make, and a run would clear his head.

Will had never walked away from any challenge. But now he was a quitter in the eyes of the world. That was a very difficult pill to swallow. But only his wife and mother could ever know the truth of why he’d walked away from the Senate run and national politics. He needed to protect his younger brother, both to preserve his mother’s secret and to shield Sean from the searing scrutiny of any potential connection to the domestic terrorist action against American Frontier. One secret—Sean’s birth father—could never emerge. And the other—the picture of Sean sharing a drink with the man who would become the AF bomber—must likewise remain in the shadows forever.

But Will couldn’t escape the feeling that with two startling revelations surfacing so recently, more were certain to follow.