Which was important given how far off the path I had gone.
Just a month ago I sat in the conference room with my brothers casually reviewing business. The very conference room we met in month after month to review our business transactions. After our usual meeting was over, I asked Dane to stand back. After all, Mr. Beacon requested his services, and I was merely to be a gateway. This meant Dane made the man’s radar. Dane didn’t make anyone’s watchlist. However, I didn’t plan on setting Dane up to take the job. When this was over, none of us would catch blowback, and no one outside of our circle would dare to enter again; I would make sure of it.
I didn’t share that with him, with any of them. They had lives and wives now. I would protect us all.
Dane had always been a loner. Even with us, he still liked to take off by himself. He traveled constantly for work. Until Aspen. He, along with the rest of the crew, had settled down, found love, and all that nonsense. Not one man close to me left without their woman now, except on the occasion Dane had to work. Only then would he leave her, but only long enough to handle the task and return.
I wasn’t about to drag him into some bullshit with a greedy bastard looking to buy pussy. Onyx and Dane put in the work to support Paxton and I as we went to college and built our careers. Whatever needed to be done to pay tuition, books, living expenses, they did it. All so Pax—who had always been our numbers guy—could be a licensed accountant, and I could be a lawyer.
As kids we spent countless hours on a busted game of Monopoly. Over time, it became more than a game. Somehow those busted pieces we created for ourselves worked into the core of the men we were growing into.
For me, I longed to go back in time. Back before I was sent away. I guess that came with the foundation of my childhood. I had a good life, until I didn’t.
Onyx, Paxton, and Dane were the only reason I made it out of those years in the orphanage with my sanity. It was easy to get lost in being lost. As a kid I grew up with a grandmother who loved me. She raised me when my mother died of an overdose and my father … wasn’t there to take me in. Then Grams got old. I was a twelve-year-old boy who she was beginning to forget. She thought she was doing right by me, sending me to Amos. She thought I would be well cared for. Sometimes even if the deed came from a heart of gold it didn’t make a situation solid. She couldn’t have known that then. She only thought she was doing the best for me.
Grams and I played lots of board games and cards too. She liked the quality time and truthfully, I was grateful for the memories now.
Still, I remembered when I found the old busted Monopoly box at the orphanage. It was like a treasure to me. We were missing pieces. Being the creative and curious boys we were, we made our own. Onyx made a portrait of himself on the Monopoly man’s body off the game board. He saw himself as the man in charge of us back then and even now. Paxton was his own money bag, and to this day was the best with all of our dollars and cents. Dane was the gun. “I’ll always protect what’s mine,” he proclaimed. I made a briefcase. Even as a boy, I knew owning property meant being a boss, and a boss I would become.
Which was why we now owned homes across the world. Some of them were group properties and some were individually owned, but available to us all because we were a family who shared. Like this little gem in the Virgin Islands. By far and away this was my favorite place to be. This was my sanctuary, my private oasis.
Originally, my plan was to use a company home. Dane had one he preferred to visit in Arizona. I set everything up for Beacon to think we went there. At least until I finished getting things aligned, he would be wasting time looking in the wrong place. Eventually, he would learn of the switch, but by then he would be impacted by other things besides finding my location.
After all, our side business of babies finding parents afforded us multiple properties all under a business front. Beacon would be wise to assume we had homes off the radar too, but I wasn’t sure the man was thinking as clearly as he thought he did. Age and distractions tended to do that to a man. He didn’t know it yet, but the distractions to his business were coming. I had it all worked out; step-by-step his empire would crumble at his feet.
Onyx handled the business more than the rest of us. It was his calling to be in charge. Paxton kept us all in the green on budget, and by green I meant large wealth and investments galore. Dane was the man with a reputation for being ruthless and cold. His skillset served us well in protection of our assets, mostly being the surrogate mothers. I was an attorney and knew exactly how to keep all of our asses clean. Well, more like under the radar; none of us were innocent or clean. Our sins damned us to Hell long ago.
It was also why I knew better than to bring her here—my place.
This was my escape. My comfort. My safe haven. There was something about the waves rolling in, the crisp blue sea, and the continual sun rays day after day that soothed my soul.
This place was personal.
She was a business transaction.
The biggest rule in business—never make shit personal.
Bringing her here was most definitely personal.
Involving myself like this, I had already broken my cardinal rule of mixing business and personal. I should have sent the old man packing. I should have refused him. Except I had my reasons, and I couldn’t pass it up. One thing life taught me was never squander your opportunities.
Beacon didn’t ask for details on where she was going. I had left a trail to lead him to a home our holding company owned in Arizona. His focused bullet point was for thirty days I kept her safe and softened her attitude about their arrangement. Did he mean for me to personally keep an eye on her for the next month?
Fuck no.
In fact, his initial instructions were to take her to California to a home he had there and keep her locked down in seclusion. I told him that wouldn’t work for me, and that I would take her where I saw fit and left it at that.
Surprisingly, he didn’t argue about my change of locations. Then again, stocks in many of his businesses were taking hits, so I wasn’t completely sure I had his full attention as I made the necessary changes to his plans. Maybe he was getting soft in his old age. I didn’t know nor did I fucking care. Bottom line, I would never give someone working for me any level of power to change a deal, but he did. It showed his weakness.
But I was the kind of man who liked to press limits. I liked to go beyond boundaries that anyone considered safe.
Because I was a dangerous kind of man.
The kind with nothing to lose.
Enissa approached me tentatively, her steps a bit unsure. Extending my hand, I offered her a greeting. She looked at me as if I might devour her.
Truthfully, I wanted to.
Not right this second, though. That would come later.
Charles Beacon was an intelligent man. He went out of his way to remain vague in the details of their arrangement. While the fine lines didn’t really matter in what I was hired to do, the man I was simply wanted to know how to tip the scales so I had all the power. Therefore, I hacked into their phone conversations and email discussions and knew every detail of their arrangement.
I wasn’t about to leave a single stone uncovered. I knew everything there was to know about Charles Beacon and Enissa Mitchell as well. The whole lot of it was rather surprising. The more I learned about Beacon, the more I found I needed to know. Every new piece of information only made me more determined to ruin the man. Enissa was the perfect play to set the game in motion, and she would be the piece I needed to win.