Page 160 of Broken Brothers

I wish he had taken the time to shut up so I could flesh out a particular thought going through my mind at that moment—for as successful a businessman as Edwin Hunt was… how successful would he be if he actually had a temper worth a shit?

“I’m so goddamn sick of your attitude! I should never have taken you into the family. I see what you’re trying to do right now, Chance, and I will see to it that it all backfires on you. You got that?”

I could sense our little fireside chat had to end soon. Edwin wouldn’t go much further before he would just simply hang up, either because he pressed End or because he had thrown the phone against the wall in frustration. Admittedly, I wanted to get him to do the latter.

“Let me give you some tips, Chance. Go the fuck away. Move to some shit city like Detroit or something. Don’t ever come back to us. And then, only then, will you ever know peace.”

That’s when I saw the chance to strike so hard at Edwin that I knew it would be worth whatever consequences emerged.

“Only if I can give you some tips back on how to save your marriage—oh, wait, damn, that’s right, you failed that.”

“You fucker!”

I wish words could describe how loudly Edwin shouted at me in those moments. Primal rage didn’t describe the emotions Edwin was showing then, because primal rage suggested something other people had experienced. I’m pretty sure the intensity and the burning hatred fueling Edwin’s words went well beyond what any sane, normal person had ever experienced before.

He laced every one of his words with fire, as if trying to char my entire body. It was too bad that to me, they just had the effect of amusingly entertaining. Yeah, there was some threat behind them, but what more could Edwin do besides what he had done? If he was actually going to hurt me, that would come back—too many people were suspicious of what happened.

“You are a dead fucking boy! Dead! Goddamn fucking shitty ass dead! I fucking hate your guts, Chance, and I will make sure that you are buried and gone forever!”

I heard a loud thud on the other end of the line before my phone beeped to say the call had died. I knew that Edwin had done what I had hoped would happened—either slammed the phone on the table or against the wall. I just had to hope that Morgan had witnessed this all so that if we ever made amends, he could tell me the story of how his father lost his absolute mind on a phone call with me.

I laughed to myself as I heard Layla’s shower ending. How ridiculous was that phone call? Here was a billionaire, a man with more money than some nations in the globe, flipping out over the actions of some young guy in his early 20’s! And the best part was, even if Virtual Realty became a unicorn, even if it sold for eleven figures or went public at that time… it wasn’t like Edwin’s net worth would increase by that much percentage wise. It just wasn’t going to be anything more than a number, a bragging point for a sad man that had to rely on bragging points without actual love in his life.

But as Layla went through the hallway and to her room, shooting me a smile along the way, I realized that my thoughts about Edwin’s murder threat probably shouldn’t have been so lighthearted. Granted, for as bad as Edwin could be, I didn’t think murder would actually happen. But just the fact that, in a more detached and sober state, I considered it even a marginal possibility told me that I couldn’t be fucking around with this anymore.

My plans to put him on his heels and make him surrender Hunt Industries had to come to the forefront now. I couldn’t be fucking around any longer. I had to go to war.

The divorce helped. But I needed more bad press. More than a few men had survived an ugly, public divorce and kept control of their business. But not many men survived murder threats, survived deceitful business practices, or survived all of those coming together.

Edwin was a powerful, influential man, but if he had the number of enemies that Mom had suggested and that I suspected, then all it would take was a little push. I would be the one to knock him off of his perch, and then the gravity of everyone else seeing an opportunity would pull him down the rest of the way.

Layla then came out, dressed in a t-shirt and underwear, sitting by me and patting my leg.

“You look… giddy,” she said, suspicious because that was my apparent mood. “What did you do?”

“Nothing yet,” I said, sitting up. I grabbed my phone, opened the call details, and showed it to Layla.

“Jesus,” she said. “I guess he decided you were worth a phone call, huh?”

“I’m not sure he thinks I’m worth anything,” I said with a chortle. “To him, he’d probably rather see me begging for pickles on the street as a homeless bum than be someone he has to talk to for more than a few minutes. Nah, he was just yelling at me for what I did with one of our investments.”

“Which was?”

I shrugged.

“Made sure I kept control and he didn’t.”

Layla nodded as if she understood, but I knew she didn’t. And I knew that only increased her suspicion of what I had done. I’m sure there would come a time in which she became even more involved in this, but for selfish reasons, I wanted to be the one to wage this war. If Layla, because of her creepy uncle, wanted to get involved after the fact, if she wanted to be part of that gravity yanking Edwin down, I was all for it.

“What else happened?”

And there’s the acknowledgment that she wants to know more. There it is.

“I suppose there’s no pussy-footing around it, huh? I want to go to goddamn war. And I want to do it now. It’s time, for the sake of everyone in the business world, to take down Edwin Hunt. The man is like a cancer on modern society, and I’m not going to let that cancer spread any further. It’s time to launch some chemo and some surgery.”

“I see. Metaphors aside, Chance, are you sure you’re in the right frame of mind for this?”

No, I didn’t. But who cared at this point? One minute I was unusually calm, the next I was ready to lash right back at Edwin. I think in the span of the 30 hours or so since I’d gotten to Layla’s apartment, I’d flung through every level of emotion and then some, all trying to figure out just what the hell I would do moving forward.