Frank: We need to talk.
It’s been days, or maybe weeks, since I’ve said goodbye to my parents, yet it still feels like it was yesterday. I haven’t left my condo since I arrived. I can’t remember the last time I ate or drank anything, or hell, even showered. It all feels like a fucking blur. Frank has called and texted several times, but I keep ignoring him. Whatever he has to say, I don’t want to hear it unless he’s going to tell me my parents are still alive.
The phone rings, his name appearing, and I click end, only for it to ring again.
“How many fucking times are you going to call?”
“As many as it takes,” he says. “Your father left a will and we need to go over it, sooner rather than later. There are things we need to discuss. Decisions that need to be made.”
Shit, I didn’t even think about any of that.
“Fine. I’ll be there soon.”
We hang up and, in a hazy state of fog, I pack a suitcase, unsure how long it’s going to take. I’m driving north on Campus Road, when the bar Noah and I frequent catches my eye. Fuck, how long has it been since we’ve spoken? Days? Weeks? I don’t even know what day today is.
At the next light, I make a quick U-turn and head to his place, wanting to check on him before I leave. I’m not sure how long I’ll be gone and the last time I heard from him he’d lost his mom. He doesn’t even know mine are gone as well. I tried to call him to tell him what happened, but he wouldn’t answer my calls, and I wasn’t in a place to be there for him when I could barely take care of myself.
When I get to his apartment, I knock a few times and then try the knob to see if it’s unlocked. Surprisingly, especially since he lives in such a shitty area, it opens.
“Noah, you here?” I call out. When nobody answers, I walk farther in. The living room is empty and so is the kitchen. But his bedroom isn’t.
I find him sitting on the edge of his bed, a bottle of whiskey in his hand. With red-rimmed, glassy eyes and a look of despair, his gaze meets mine. He looks like shit—rightfully so.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” he mutters, raising the bottle to his lips and taking a long swig.
I pry the bottle from his hand. “I was trying to get a hold of you. My parents… they were killed a few days after your mom passed away.”
Noah’s lids slowly shut and his head drops, shaking from side to side. “I’m sorry. Life’s a bitch.”
I nod, even though he can’t see me, because he’s right. It is. “I have to go home. Handle a bunch of shit. Why don’t you come with me? It’ll be a change of scenery.” I can use the company, and based on the way he looks, he probably shouldn’t be alone.
He releases a harsh breath and his eyes ascend to meet mine. “You want me to go with you?”
“Yeah.”
He glances around his bedroom. “All right, let’s go. It’s not like I have anything left for me here.”
After he packs a bag, we throw it into my trunk and get on the road. It’s only two hours to Crystal Harbor, where I grew up, and the ride is quick, both of us lost in our own thoughts.
When we pull up to my family home, where Frank insisted we meet, I look over at Noah, who’s staring at the monstrosity of a house with wide eyes. To most, the place looks ostentatious with its marble fountains and rose gardens and colonial-style pillars holding up the second floor wraparound porch, giving it an aerial view of the hundreds of acres it sits on, but to me it’s just home. At least it was when my parents were alive. My dad built this home for my mom for their ten-year anniversary. Every detail came from love, and now, I don’t think I can even go in. And I definitely have no desire to stay—or live—here.
“I don’t think you ever told me,” Noah says. “What did your dad do for a living?”
“He was a real estate developer… amongst other things.”
Frank walks outside to greet me as I turn the car off and get out, Noah following my lead.
“Isaac, thank you for coming. I know this is hard for you.”
I make introductions and then we follow Frank into the house. The smell of my mother’s floral perfume hits my nostrils and it takes everything in me not to break apart, but I push it down, not wanting to lose it again. I can lament in my misery later when I’m alone.
“It seems your father never got around to updating his will,” Frank says once we’ve had a seat in my dad’s office. I keep my eyes on Frank, unable to look around at anything that’s my dad’s. It’s too hard, hurts too much.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“His will was created before you made your decision to go to college and take a different route…”
He doesn’t have to explain further because I know what this means without him saying another word. My dad would’ve given me the damn world if he could, and until I left for college, his dream was for me to join the family business, to work alongside him and one day take over, so it makes sense he would make sure, in his death, I’m taken care of.
“Since you were his only child, he left everything to you,” Frank says. “His homes, his companies, his assets… Everything that was his is now yours.”
I nod in understanding. My life is no longer mine. I’m no longer a college graduate seeking employment. I’m Isaac Petrosian, real estate developer and vigilante.
CHAPTER THREE
ISAAC
Twelve Years Later
“Fuck!” I pound my fist on the top of the desk and stand, pissed as hell. “Brad was supposed to sign off on the permits, so what the hell is the problem?”
Noah doesn’t even flinch, used to my outbursts. It comes with the territory when you’re running one of the largest real estate development companies in the country and have enemies standing on the sidelines waiting at every turn to see you fail.
He hands me the paperwork. “He was on board... But there’s been some new developments.”
I skim the papers, my anger rising with every word I read on the page. “Are you kidding me? The ERM has deemed fifteen acres a goddamned wetland?” I drop the papers onto the desk and pace the floor. The hundred-acre parcel of land was approved to be turned into an industrial park. When my father purchased it over fifteen years ago, it only had one acre of wetland and since then, Brad, the mayor of Crystal Harbor, and I came to an agreement. I would build the community a new park and he would look the other way while I had that acre bulldozed over. Now, days before we’re scheduled to clear the land, he’s pulling this bullshit? The ERM—environmental resource management—is only called out when someone calls the county and makes a damn complaint, and Brad damn sure knows better than to do that. This makes no sense and I’m going to get to the bottom of it.
“Let’s go.” I snag my jacket from behind my chair and shrug it on, grabbing my keys and pocketing my phone.
Ten minutes later, we enter the town of Crystal Harbor. Situated just inside the Marion County limits, about twenty years ago, it was voted on and declared its own town, separate from Chester Creek, the city I live in. The population is six thousand and everyone knows everyone.