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“Yeah, well, your methods reflect on me.” I couldn’t keep the anger out of my voice. In fact, I wasn’t even trying.

“I don’t remember you ever complaining about me getting you what you needed before. Why’s this different?” he questioned.

“Well, now I am. This is unacceptable.”

“Why are you even wasting time with that place? It’s a decrepit, run-down ranch. It will never be a moneymaker. There’s no profit in it.”

“I pay you to give me information, not your opinions. And I pay you to do that subtly. Do you understand that?”

“Whatever, dude,” he huffed. “If you don’t like my methods, that’s your problem.”

“No, it’s yours. This is the last time I’m collaborating with you.”

“Are you shitting me right now?”

“I don’t condone such behavior. It’s beneath me.”

He scoffed. “You LeBlancs always think you’re better than everyone else, don’t you? Well, you’re not.”

What?I was dumbfounded. What had gotten into Marcel? Or was this his real opinion of me and my family, and I was just now finding out?

“As I said, I don’t give a shit about your opinions. But a word of warning: none of your clients will like this type of behavior. It’s a very lazy, unprofessional way to get information.”

I was fuming by the time I hung up. Fucking hell, I was never going to use Marcel’s services again. I would ask Xander how he surveyed businesses. In fact, I decided to head to my brother’s office in the business district right then. Maybe I should’ve taken him up on his offer to look into Grace’s endeavors in the first place.

I hadn’t paid him a visit in a while, so it would be nice to catch up. I liked that all of us were within walking distance in the Quarter. I met with the rest of the family far more often thanXander. He’d always done things his own way, and I respected that.

Of course, going to see him on a whim turned out not to be my best idea, as my brother wasn’t in his office.

“I’m truly sorry. Did you have an appointment with him?” his assistant asked.

“No, not at all. I just figured I’d drop by and see if he was here and had some time to chat.”

She looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language. Yeah, that was definitely not my brother. If I wanted to see him, I knew I had to get on his calendar. That was just how he worked.

“Should I tell him you dropped by?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll talk to him later.”

I could head back straight to the Quarter, or I could grab a coffee nearby. Since I couldn’t get this business with Grace out of my mind, I figured it might be best to take a minute to myself before going back to work. Maybe I’d be able to focus on something else once I had some caffeine in my system.

I stared across the road and suddenly thought I was seeing things. Was it my imagination, or was Grace Deveraux sitting outside the coffee shop across the way, talking on the phone? I zeroed in on the figure and realized it truly was her.

I walked straight over to her even though I didn’t know what I was going to say. But I wanted to get to the bottom of why she’d been antagonizing me at the ranch. No matter what Marcel did, her behavior had been completely unprofessional, and while I might be laid-back, I definitely wanted to call her out on it.

She’d pocketed her phone by the time I reached her and was sipping from a cup of coffee. I stopped right in front of her, and she looked up. Her demeanor instantly changed. Her smile fell, and she looked upset.

“Zachary,” she exclaimed. “Did you follow me here?”

I jerked my head back. “What the actual hell? Why would I do that?”

“I don’t know. What are you even doing here?”

She seemed angry. And that instantly pissed me off. Did she really think the world revolved around her?

“I was in the neighborhood. My brother has offices here.”

“Oh, I supposed you’ve come to ask for more information about me from the infamous Xander LeBlanc?”