Page 116 of Broken Brothers

And given what everyone else in my life wanted to tell me, maybe it was best that I just left it at that. With one of the few people who things weren’t that complicated or dramatic with, less truly was more.

Claire and I were in about as perfect a spot as we could be for the moment. The question was just how long it would remain perfect.

48

In my apartment, the sun had barely broken the horizon on Tuesday morning. Not that the timing of the day made anything any more peaceful—we lived in New York City, after all, a city that never slept not just because people were so busy but because the sounds of the streets never stopped, making a steady sleep a reality only for those who lived on the 20th floor or above of skyscrapers.

That, and today was finally the day that Morgan would walk into his father’s office with a wire on, allowing me to listen live to what was being said.

Morgan never did feel any easier about the situation. In fact, he fought even harder as the days went by. At first, I tried to delicately explain to him the need to do what we were doing, using a mixture of reassurances, hope for the future, and a touch of tough love.

But my patience with Morgan and his inability to see the reality of things was driving me insane more than any of Edwin’s antics. Morgan hadn’t understood what it meant to be adopted ten years ago, he hadn’t understood what it meant to be striking out on our own just a year ago, and he didn’t understand nowwhat it meant to have to take necessary force. It’s almost like being the only biological son of a billionaire had made him born into lala land where none of the rules applied to him.

If anything, Morgan should have just been grateful that he was there as a buffer. I couldn’t say that I would’ve resorted to violence against the old man—not that I didn’t fantasize about it from time to time—but I sure would have had much less shame in breaking the rules to get what I wanted. In business, I was Chance Hunt, but in the real world, I was Chance Givens, my own man, not someone dependent on a sugar daddy to pay anything for me.

I grabbed the wire and found Morgan sitting in the living room, typing away on a laptop.

“Sup,” I said groggily, the only thing I had done to that point involving brushing my teeth, grabbing the wire, and putting gym shorts on.

“Just pursuing a few more leads for MCH,” he said, his voice more alert than mine. It made me suspect he’d gotten up earlier than I had and had not fallen back asleep. “You know, we might as well grow and diversify.”

I almost blurted out, “There’s no need to grow if we’re not going to remove the ceiling about to cave in on us,” but knew that the more I used tough talk, the tougher our relationship would be. Instead, I just said, “nice,” and went to cook some breakfast.

What unfolded over the next half hour could only be described as the most surreal normal morning I had ever had. By all appearances, if someone could not see into our minds, it would look like a typical morning. I cooked bacon and eggs, Morgan sent off emails and did research, I turned on ESPN with the volume low, and we didn’t talk much. Even though we’d spoken a great deal about the problem ahead of us in weeks past, in general, we communicated just by being near each other.

But inside my mind, I was eagerly anticipating what would go down with the wire. The worst case that involved excitement was Morgan getting caught with the wire—I almost wanted him to pull off a James Bond-esque escape that had him fleeing the enemy through elevators, stairs, and maybe even ventilation shafts. But that was my young, eager mind just looking for a movie moment in this whole thing.

No, the real worst case scenario, one that I had for its plausibility, was that Morgan, upon arriving at his father’s office, would freeze up, not say anything, and the wire would be worthless. Or, equally worst case, he would start asking probing questions, and it would turn out that Edwin Hunt did a lot of questionably ethical things but nothing that we could use against him at a later date.

Obviously, the best case scenario was Edwin blurting something out, me saving the recording, and using that to get him off our backs.

It seemed like the best case, at least. Who knew what sorts of shenanigans and dangers that would unlock, but that was a thought for another day.

Vacillating between all of the possibilities energized my mind and woke me up faster than the bacon and eggs. I felt like a football player sitting in the locker room half an hour before kickoff, all padded up and ready to knock the shit out of someone but unable to. I wanted to yell out “Let’s go!”

Except I didn’t, because I knew Morgan probably had an even more extreme hurricane of thoughts. Either he would betray the trust of his father or his brother—that was a relationship that was inked beyond blood, it went way deeper than that. There was very little middle ground in which he kept both relationships alive.

That must have sucked, but my disgust and hatred for the old man had gotten so strong that I no longer had much sympathyfor Morgan’s family ties. I had sympathy for his stress, but not the cause of his stress.

Finally, it came time for Morgan to head over for a scheduled 8:30 a.m. meeting with his father.

“You’re really going to make me do this, huh?” Morgan said as took off his dress shirt.

“Don’t think of it as something stupid or evil,” I said. “Think of it as the chance to wear something that only someone in the movies would do. You’re like a mole. It’s kind of awesome, isn’t it?”

“Don’t the moles usually die in movies?”

“I don’t know, I have better things to do than analyze drug movies. Besides, it’s not a drug movie, bro.”

“It’s a bust movie?”

“Something like that. You’re not going to die. I might, but you won’t. Papa Hunt loves you too much.”

I wondered if Edwin actually did love Morgan. He didn’t love me, that was obvious from the day he adopted me. Much to my grief on behalf of Melanie, I don’t think he loved his wife either, even though she was as sweet and wonderful a woman as you could get. If there was anyone in the world he loved, it was Morgan.

Kind of sad, the more I thought about it. Maybe that’s why Edwin had reacted so strongly. If he lost his son to me, then he wouldn’t have anyone in the world to love.

Well, this is getting more morbid than I had hoped. Time to finish up.