Page 25 of Broken Brothers

“Dad keeps pushing me to take a more active role in business negotiations,” Morgan said. “It’s like he wants to make me CEO by 25, which seems ludicrous, but the old man is getting up there in years.”

I could see that. Ever since we’d gone to college, something in Edwin Hunt’s sails had seemed to go out just a smidge. He could still talk with the best, but his accuracy and his sharpness had faded just a tad.

“Well, you know,” I said, hesitant to brag but willing to show that I had made a name for myself. “I actually have—”

I paused. Morgan had a bad habit of checking his phone while we talked, but he seemed to be doing it rather frequently even by his standards. He also was laughing quite a bit, making me wonder what was so funny as to distract from our conversation.

“Sorry, you were saying?” Morgan said.

“I said that I am actually working on a deal right now with a business. Didn’t think it would happen but I’m running the show on an eight-figure investment we might make.”

“Damn, Chance, look at you! That needs a toast.”

I couldn’t help myself.

“Here’s the best part,” I said.

But then I hesitated.

I remembered what had happened with Tracy. I remembered how we both had access to her because of her father negotiating with our family business and ultimately, Morgan had won. I would win… until Morgan showed up.

No matter what arena I played in, no matter what girl I dated, no matter what pursuit I sought, if Morgan came in, Morgan won. He won Tracy and he probably would have won the multi-named girl and maybe even Sarah if he had tried.

“What?” Morgan said, an eager smile on my face.

“Ahh, I can’t tell you yet,” I said, deflecting. “Sorry, I almost spilled something confidential.”

Which, in some ways, was technically true. I trusted Morgan not to spill the beans if I confessed about getting a handjob from under the table from Layla, but all it took was him telling one person “in confidence” and then having that one person make a chain reaching to Craig Taylor or Mr. Burnson.

“Well, I’d ask, but my father would probably want to know more and I don’t really feel like making more work for myself right now,” he said with a chuckle. “Speaking of my father, I wanted to ask you something.”

Whenever someone prefaced a conversation with this, I was always left a little uneasy. I didn’t like the idea of people “wanting to talk” or “having a question about something.” It almost always resulted in something negative and something that would make me feel worse.

But it was Morgan, so I allowed him to continue.

“My father wants to bring you back to Hunt Industries, would you—”

“Dude,” I said, with a half-chuckle. Of all the things that Morgan could have asked, that was by far the easiest one to deflect. It required almost no thought on my end. “How many times do I have to tell you? I have zero interest in joining the firm. I want to make my own name and my own fortunes, not be another cog in the Hunt game.”

“I know, I know,” Morgan said, clearly aware of what I was going to say. “But my father insisted I ask you.”

Now that’s surprising.

Edwin Hunt had more or less treated me like a couch in the living room for most of our lives—as something physically present he had to be aware of, but not something he would necessarily talk to. Sure, on rare occasion, he would talk to me, but it almost exclusively happened when Morgan was there, and he never had the same depth of conversation with me as he did his biological son.

So what this meant… I didn’t know. The mystery did not change my desire to be independent of Hunt Industries, but it did make me want to know more.

“Well, I insist on reminding you that you know the answer,” I said with a laugh.

As I laughed, though, I looked out the window and saw something that told me I was either losing my mind or… well, probably just losing my mind.

Standing outside was Layla Taylor. She wasn’t watching me, but it was easy to see I would be in her line of vision, and she wasn’t moving in particular. I found myself caught gazing at her, wondering if she was a hallucination of someone I wanted to see or just actually there on pure coincidence.

“What are you looking at?”

Morgan’s words snapped me out of my delusion. I apologized and quickly turned back, saying that I thought I had seen someone that I knew but that they just looked like someone else. Morgan nodded, saying that was a rather common thing in New York City.

But I knew the truth. I knew that I had seen Layla.