Page 94 of Broken Brothers

I snapped out of my thoughts as I turned to Morgan, who had his phone pressed to his ear. His hair looked disheveled and his shirt wrinkled on him. For someone who had always seemed like the true embodiment of a Hunt, for someone who got girls more than I—despite me having more charm—he sure looked like he was at the bottom of a pit right now.

And with good reason. His father had fired him. His father had likely threatened to disown him, if not write him out of the will entirely. He had lost his place because his father, who had paid for his Manhattan apartment, had kicked him out. And he probably didn’t have any women he was seeing right now, largely because, well, of everything I had just listed.

But even for all of that, he looked on the verge of collapse. I motioned for him to put the phone on speaker, and he did so, placing it on the coffee table.

“—how much easier I can make it for you, boy.”

The all-too-familiar voice of Edwin Hunt came from the phone. I hated that voice so much. God, of all the people whom I wished I could banish to the ends of the Earth, it was hard to think of someone more worthy of that “honor” than Edwin Hunt.

The patriarch of the Hunt clan, Edwin cared for money and about nothing else. He treated his wife as an almost literal trophy, he treated his son as an extension of himself, a businessman who only existed to make more money, and he treated me… well, for the first roughly 21 years of my life, he didn’t treat me at all. I was just a non-existent entity in the house, given as much attention by him as a dog that he never really wanted to take home from the pound.

But over the past three months, he had taken a much more manipulative and cruel approach to me. He would offer me jobs at Hunt Industries, but I knew he only did so for the sake of controlling me or making money off of my efforts. When I refused, he threatened to ruin me. And now that I had basically stolen his son from him—at least in his eyes—he would do nothing more than to see me beyond ruined. I would have taken a bet that Edwin Hunt was trying to strike a deal with the literary publishers in New York to make sure the name Chance Hunt was never published.

“There is only one way that you have any sort of future as a Hunt,” Edwin said. “I understand that you may have been in an irrational state the past few weeks. It was easy to get caught up in that fucking boy’s idea of doing it on your own.”

Boy.

I hated that word. I hated it so much I was pretty sure I would never call my future kids boy. I would just use the word son.

It connoted everything negative I had assumed Edwin Hunt had ever ascribed to us. It told me he saw me as a worthless piece of shit barely worth acknowledging. It told me he saw me as inferior, as nothing more than a body to do some busy work.

There were two fucking problems with that. One, I was twenty two, not twelve. The fact that I was self-aware enough to know I wasn’t mature meant I was light years ahead of anyonemy age or even within five years of me. If I was a boy, then so was everyone else under the age of thirty-five.

Two, this “boy” had just beaten him at his own game and gotten an investment deal with a company that would be worth billions someday. What did that make Edwin Hunt if he had gotten beat by two boys?

“But that is nonsense and you know it, Morgan. You will never amount to anything without me. I have given you everything you’ve ever had in your life, and without me, you die. You know it. Don’t even act like it could be any other way.”

Morgan looked visibly shaken. I wanted to reach through and punch Edwin Hunt in his cocky face. Didn’t he know how easily either of us could kick his ass?

“I have grown tired of playing softball with you, boy. I gave you everything. I went nice when Melanie said so. I let her influence me too much. There will be no more bullshit or playing nice with you, boy. If you ever want to have a future, here’s what’s going to happen.”

My hands curled up. I don’t know how Morgan had the self-control he did. Probably because his father had succeeded in breaking him.

“One, you are going to disown that… Chance character forever,” he said. I actually wasn’t that mad at what was said, at least not any madder than I already was. It’s not like I had expected Edwin to like me. “You will never talk to him again or say his name ever again. Second, you will sell everything you own in that tiny, pathetic company you have. I’ll let you keep the money because of how little it means to me, but you will sell it to me and give me the shares. Third…”

“Dad!”

A halting silence filled the air. All three of us waited for someone to crack it. In the end, it was Morgan who did so.

“I hear you. But I’m not quitting. I’m sticking with Chance. He’s been there for me whenever I need help beyond money. You just give me money and think anything will go away, no matter what the issue. I don’t care about that anymore. I’ll make enough money. You can keep your billions. It won’t mean anything compared to the support Chance gives.”

Oh, how I wish we had set up that call as a video chat. I wanted to see the veins bulging from Edwin Hunt, the snorts that resembled that of a bull, the inevitable roar that was meant to display anger but instead just looked incredibly goofy and ridiculous.

“You… fucking… idiot!”

I heard a few things fly across the office. I honestly had to work my damndest to stifle my laughter, because the whole thing was just fucking hysterical. What kind of a leader lost their temper like that?

“I thought you would have gotten the picture by now, Morgan,” Edwin said. “But it seems you never will. Fine. You want to know what I do to my enemies, boy? You want to know what it looks like when I am unafraid to break someone? You’re about to get your wish. You are about to enter a world of hell that you will never escape. Your name will be ruined forever. You will never be able to get a job sweeping floors at McDonald’s, let alone what you do now. You will come begging for mercy, but you will find I have no mercy, because that is the only way you can succeed in business. I had hoped you would learn from what I told you, but now I see you will have to learn from observing it happen to you. Don’t come begging for forgiveness, Morgan. You will never have it from me!”

With one final scream on the other side, the line disconnected. Finally, free from having to stay quiet, I burst out laughing.

But my laughter died very quickly when I saw Morgan’s face.

“What?” I said.

“You never got to see what happened to the business associates that crossed my father,” Morgan said. The tone with which he spoke suggested only one thing—nothing Edwin had just said was an exaggeration. “We’re about to be in serious trouble.”

He looked at me very seriously, as focused and together as I had seen him in the days since we started Morgan & Chance Holdings.