Page 177 of Morally Black Betrothal

I fought a cringe at his crass words as I allowed him to brush a kiss to my cheek in greeting. Now I knew where the cigarette smoke came from.

“Good to see you too,” I lied.

“I should think so.” He cocked his head, still openly looking over my body, which was clothed in a light summer dress and a sweater. I wasn’t going for revealing—I never really did—but he made me feel like I was half naked. “So what can I do for you?”

“You, er, you recently made a deal with Brendan Black for the, um, return of Selena’s kid?” I said softly to avoid the ears of the receptionist, who kept casting scornful glances my way.

Ezra’s brows knitted together. “I, uh, did, yeah. He told you about that, did he?”

“I’d like to discuss it, if you don’t mind.”

“Look, Simone, I know it’s your family’s farm and all, but?—”

“Please.” Fighting nausea, I forced myself to trail a flirtatious hand up his arm. “It would mean a lot.”

His beady eyes narrowed, but he seemed curious, at least. “Sure. Follow me to my office.”

Every cell in my body screamed not to follow this man into a private room, but I didn’t have much of a choice. After all, what had I come here for if not for the chance to change his mind?

I followed him around several winding corridors into the building, past one room where men who looked just like him were jabbering on phones and taking what sounded like bets while people in another were smoking and gesturing toward a big map on the wall of a valley that looked a lot like the area around Woodstock.

He kept going, then opened the door to an office containing a battered desk, a few chairs, and a lot of posters featuring scantily clad women holding beers alongside a map that matched the other one I’d seen. Yes, it was definitely Windsor County, dotted with a bunch of new planned projects that definitely weren’t there now.

“It’s…nice,” I said lamely. God, I was terrible at this.

“Take a seat.” Ezra did the same behind the desk. “You want?” He opened a mini-fridge behind him containing a variety of alcoholic beverages.

“No, thank you. You bought my family’s property.”

“Straight to the point, huh? Fine by me. Technically, I wasgivenyour family’smortgage. Good thing too, although maybe not for you. But your dad hadn’t paid taxes on the place in five years, and he’s well behind on the mortgage payments too. I think you already know why I wanted it. Your ‘fiancé’ originally had it for the same reason.”

Something thick in my throat made it hard to swallow. I hadn’t stopped to wonder why Blackguard possessed themortgage to begin with—banks sold them to each other all the time, so why shouldn’t the holding company do that sort of thing?

Owen’s anger, however, made more sense. Clearly, they’d been planning something with the “investments” he’d mentioned. Possibly something similar to the development plans tacked to Ezra’s wall.

“Congratulations, by the way.” Ezra cracked open a can of beer. “When’s the big day?”

I didn’t answer. Whatever defined my relationship with Brendan Black was purely legal now, and it had no bearing on this situation.

I still couldn’t bring myself to refute it, though. “I want to pay off the mortgage. Or do whatever is needed to get rid of my father’s debts. What would it take to reverse the sale?”

Ezra eyed me over his beer for a moment, then set it down and sat forward. “That’s a complicated question. From a purely business standpoint, there’s no reason for us to sell. Even to someone as cute as you.”

I wanted to laugh. Or maybe cry. It was ludicrous, this idiot in his record-store-owner drag, acting like he was the Wolf of Wall Street. And yet, this fool held my family’s future in his palm.

“Name your price,” I said. “The value of the mortgageplusits interest through term, I’ll pay it. Plus twenty percent.”

That would completely drain my bank account. But I’d solve that problem tomorrow.

Ezra sat back in his chair and kicked his boots up on the desk as he took another drink of his beer. “You’re cute. But do you even know what’s owed on that property?”

“My dad leveraged it in the nineties to upgrade equipment.”

“And did it again to finance payroll in the aughts. One more time a few years ago. Your dad’s been robbing Peter to pay Paulfor the last twenty years.” He pulled a file from his desk and slid it toward me. “That last one was for your sister. Selena had this idea to convert half the pastures to grow weed. It was good, and I was interested, but the bill to legalize commercial growing failed in Vermont.” He leered. “Not much of a head for business, you Bishop girls.”

It sounded like Selena, of course. The same kind of ill-advised planning she’d tried to pull off with her little mushroom venture.

But this was so much worse than I thought, I realized as I leafed through the file. Bank statements, loan documents, notices of default. The second loan had been taken out after my mother died, just to keep us afloat and pay the few workers he had kept on. And then the third, clearly done with a forged signature, leveraged the whole thing against Selena’s plans.