Page 144 of Broken Brothers

Ireclined on Layla’s plush, green couch that I had made myself, wondering when the last time I had actually been on this couch was.

Or, perhaps better said, if I’d ever been on her couch clothed.

For the most part, I had always taken her back to my place. She’d kept her distance from me coming into her place, perhaps knowing what she did about what she was going to do with her uncle. Time and space had allowed me to forgive her for such actions, but the immediate time and space prevented me too much from going back to the way things were.

And, in any case, everything over the previous few hours had been spent not talking to her and more talking to myself.

I tried to encourage myself that things would be fine. I’d gotten through some awfully humiliating situations before, like being publicly embarrassed in the Burnson Investments fiasco, and come out on the other aside in one piece. I’d survived the shame Edwin Hunt liked to cast upon me, and had emerged stronger because of everything that he would try to throw my way.

There was nothing like this, though. Nothing to compare to being homeless, jobless, and broke. I didn’t have access to the trust fund money that Morgan did, a terrible break in fate given that Morgan already had access of sorts to a different type of trust fund in ridiculously well paying job at Hunt Industries. I just had my guile, my wits, and a lady that wanted to sleep with me but whom I could not be with.

Well, that was not quite completely true.

“OK,” I said, my head in my hands. “What all do you have?”

I grabbed a pen and paper to write this down, the better so I could visualize it on paper. I had Rising Sun, although that was in a worst spot than two hours after the Titanic had struck the fatal iceberg. I had Virtual Realty, which was a nice grab, but the problem was Edwin would take over MCH very soon, and that would scuttle many of my plans. I suppose I could have tried to get a way to get half from Morgan before the completion went through, but I wasn’t even sure if I could pull that off, legally speaking.

It wasn’t overlooked, I’m sure, by Edwin that when he took over Morgan’s half, Morgan would not sell anymore shares in the company until the completion of the sale. And while I could fight Edwin in a lot of ways, through a legal quagmire was not one of them. That was a battle that being a billionaire made you the equivalent of the old Roman Empire, largely unassailable until your own arrogance or squandering of resources did you end.

And in any case, that all ignored one major problem.

I wasn’t going to speak to Morgan or to Edwin any time soon. Certainly, I never desired to speak to Edwin Hunt, the miserable curmudgeon of a man who would rather win a thousand bucks than spend a hundred on a gift for either Morgan or me. I never had any attachment to him, and he was not particularly shyabout addressing me indirectly, always speaking to Morgan and never me.

But Morgan?

Fuck, man. What had happened?

One minute, I had gotten Morgan to leave his old man’s firm, set out on my own path, and to start becoming a different kind of Hunt. If ever there was someone I could have depended on for my entire life, it was Morgan.

And then it all proved to be one massive trap, one massive way for Morgan to upend everything in my life. With one betrayal, one move from partner and co-founder of Morgan & Chance Holdings to being back under his father’s wing, I was left in the position I was in.

If he thought that I would ever so much as nod my head at him, he was fucking mistaken.

I looked at what I’d written down so far, “RS,” “Virt. Realty,” and “no fucking family.” It seemed like a sadly succinct description of everything I had.

I heard a soft knock from the doorway to Layla’s room. I looked up to see Layla sporting clothing similar to what she had worn when she grabbed me from the lobby, except now it was quite noticeable that she did not have a bra on. Whether this was intentional or not did not matter, because it was clear that now, having had this lack of clothing made obvious, her own intentions were clear.

“Where are you gonna sleep?” she asked.

It was easily the most straightforward she had been on anything resembling this topic all day.

“I figured the couch,” I said. “I’ve got to do a lot of thinking if I’m going to get myself out of this shithole. And you know, they say your best thinking comes on a couch.”

“Don’t you mean a shower?”

I shrugged, like it mattered. I turned my attention back to the notepad in front of me. I knew it was rude, but being rude seemed to be the only thing that might get through to Layla then.

Indeed, I heard her pout, and I heard her footsteps, giving me a small, fleeting moment of victory.

I say fleeting because it took me maybe three steps’ worth of sound to realize that she was coming to me, not her bedroom. I looked up from the notepad, crossed my arms with it against my chest, and scooted about a foot away in the other direction so Layla would have room to sit.

Not that she couldn’t have gotten on the couch if I didn’t do that.

She looked at me, her head in her hand, pressed up on the back of the couch, and smiled. It looked very strained, though, as if she was trying to maintain some semblance of optimism to her that was failing her by the second.

“Do you remember a conversation we had?” she said. “Right before all the shit went down with my uncle’s company and Edwin’s?”

“I remember a lot of conversations,” I teased, although I knew full well which one she was referring to—and goddamnit, the last thing we needed was to go back down that road all over again.