Page 41 of Mad Rivals (The Bradley Legacy #1)

Can You Ensure Her Silence

I’m not surprised when I get a voicemail from my father demanding to see me in his office immediately.

I broke into his top-secret warehouse, bypassed Goliath, and discovered his secret. Of course he wants to see me.

I didn’t pick up when I saw him calling a little after eight, and that was probably my first mistake.

I was at a restaurant eating breakfast with my girl, both of us in hats to try to stay under the media’s radar while we decompressed after a rather intense morning, and I didn’t particularly want to talk to my father.

Even so, it comes as no surprise that he’s inside my penthouse when I arrive home with Kennedy in tow.

“You were supposed to be getting information from her, not sleeping with her,” he hisses at me, pointing at Kennedy, and, okay, so that’s how this is going to go.

He’s just going to go ahead and blow up my entire life. Cool, cool.

She looks devastated by his words, and I try to reassure her.

“It’s not like that, Ken,” I say softly. “You know how I feel about you, and you know he’s not going to take this lying down.”

She snags her bottom lip between her teeth, and I feel like the scum of the earth right now. But my father just makes it worse .

“Excuse us,” he spits at her. “I need to talk to my son. Alone.”

She spins on her heel and walks right out the door we just came in through.

“Kennedy, wait,” I call after her, but she just shakes her head, holds up a hand that clearly says I can go fuck myself, and lets the door slam shut behind her. I turn toward my father. “What the fuck?”

“I could ask you the same,” he hisses. “You know we have cameras at the warehouse, right? Did you think I wouldn’t find out you were there?”

“I knew you would. I just didn’t care,” I say.

His brows rise, as does his heart rate, I’m certain, since that vein in his forehead becomes a little more pronounced.

“If this is my legacy , I need to know what I’m getting into,” I say, putting a little extra emphasis on the word legacy . He can be angry all he wants. He’s not the only one.

“How did you get in?” he demands.

“Deepfake. It wasn’t hard. Your state-of-the-art system isn’t really all that secure, and you should probably be more creative with your passcodes.”

“Deepfake?” he asks.

I blow out a breath. “I took some security footage of you from the office and had someone create a video of your face. I showed it to your facial recognition thing, and boom. Access granted.”

He looks impressed, but whether or not he’s impressed with my hacking skills is irrelevant to me. The only thing relevant just walked out my door, and I will figure out how to fix that next.

“Look, you weren’t going to tell me what was going on, and now I know,” I say as I eye my father warily.

“I have about a million questions, but let me start with one. Were you going to tell me about this when you handed Bradley Group over to me, or were you going to continue laundering illegal casino money through your legitimate real estate business? ”

He sighs and wanders over toward the windows. He looks out over Navy Pier for a long time before he answers me.

“Remember how I told you I was injured my senior year of college?” he asks.

“Your knee.”

“Mm-hmm. I’d gotten involved in an underground poker ring, and I owed some people some money.

When I couldn’t come up with the money, they beat the shit out of me.

Tore my ACL with enough nerve damage that they ensured I’d never play again.

I guess it was then that I vowed I’d never be vulnerable to those types of people again.

Instead, I’d be the one sending the henchmen to collect payment, so to speak.

It’s why I worked hard to create something out of nothing.

It started as an underground ring, and when I found how lucrative it was, I saved money.

I opened the development firm and ran the ring on the side.

Eventually it became the members-only, high-class, luxury experience you broke into today. ”

“Evidently with poor security.”

He gives me a wry look. “Evidently.”

“So what happened with Van Buren? Is that related?”

“The client I won from under him years ago was a member. Of course he chose Bradley Group for his project. I opened a line of credit for him, and he awarded me the business. Van Buren has held a grudge ever since.”

I blow out a breath. I wonder how many more examples there are of this exact sort of thing. How many clients are part of this ring? Where does it stop?

“I don’t want any part of the illegal shit you’re doing,” I finally say. My voice sounds tired. I am tired. I feel like I’ve aged ten years in the last four hours.

“All the things I’ve done for you, done for this family,” he says, and whirls around to glare at me.

“What, Dad? What have you done?” I demand.

When he doesn’t answer, I ask again, this time a whisper, as all the advantages in my life, everything that’s always seemed to come so easily, flash before my eyes and the heavy truth falls into place.

My stomach feels queasy as I ask, “What have you done?”

He purses his lips, but he doesn’t answer. Instead, he starts to walk toward my door. “That’s enough for one day. I trust you’ll keep this to yourself?”

I guess he has henchmen to ensure I do.

“Yeah,” I mutter.

“What about the girl? Can you ensure her silence?”

“She won’t tell anybody.” I try to be convincing because if I’m not, I’m terrified he will find a way to silence her. I don’t know how far he’s gone, and I don’t want to know what he’ll do if he’s pressed further.

He walks out the door, and as it clicks shut behind him, I can’t help but wonder exactly how much of my life has been manipulated by my father. How many decisions he’s masterminded for me—and my siblings, too.

And for the first time, I can’t help but wonder whether he somehow arranged this thing with Kennedy, too.