Page 60 of Morally Black Betrothal

EVERYONE WANTS TO PROVE THEMSELVES

Brendan

“Clearly, this is the only way to go. Brendan, what do you think?”

Out the windows of the Blackguard executive conference room, Boston stretched to the horizon, a blanket of concrete and history. In one direction, the city was dappled with the green expanse of the Common to Downtown Crossing and the Harbor beyond. In the other, high-rises and brownstones cluttered Back Bay to Fenway Park and south toward the gray corner of Jamaica Plain I’d visited last night.

I was fourteen when Blackguard took over this building and my father took me into this exact room, swept his hand over the view, and told me all of it was basically our family’s for the taking. Like I was the Lion King or some shit like that, and he was the benevolent father, not the terror who had raised me to be little more than a bulldog waiting for its turn in the pit.

It didn’t last long. By that point, the backyard fights had morphed into group lessons on ruthless greed and cutthroattactics. The world could belong to us, he said, but only if we were hungry enough to take it.

Love and winning never went hand in hand in the Black family, that was for sure. Whatever consciences were in his children, Niall Black had cut out like a surgeon.

Behind me, four executive officers, my three siblings, and too many lawyers sat around the table, arguing over the agenda while Dad was out of commission. The board meeting Liza had called after we’d announced Dad’s condition had been delayed until tomorrow—a frustrating delay for many considering that half of the executive members who weren’t part of the Black family were sprinkled around the globe like finishing salt.

I stared at the view, barely paying attention to the debates raging behind me. Was that the decaying brick building Simone Bishop called home? Was she still there, or had she decided to make her way to my side of town?

I hated being wrong. But it was five o’clock, and there hadn’t been so much as a phone call from the girl since I’d left her apartment one week ago. At this point, I half expected the contract I’d given her to make the five o’clock news.

Strangely, I was less concerned with that than the way the memory of her mouth seemed to cling to my every waking thought. All week, my mind kept trailing back to Simone standing in her kitchen, her nose dappled with flour, mouth open and swollen from that ill-advised kiss, looking adorably flummoxed by my offer.

I couldn’t blame her for her silence, of course. I still couldn’t believe I’d actually had the stones to leave it with her. So many things could go wrong.

The itch to check the tabloids was almost unbearable.

“Big brother?”

“Hey, asshole, you want to weigh in here?”

“Brendan!”

With a heavy sigh, I turned back to the table. Eight pairs of eyes were trained on me.

“Say that again,” I directed whoever had just been speaking. I didn’t know, nor did I care.

“Christ.” Ronan’s eyes blazed from a few seats down. “Need a little break to do some soul-searching over there, big brother? You can backpack across Europe if you want to. Or maybe go do some fucking yoga. Would serve us better than being ignored.”

I scowled. “What is that supposed to mean?”

Ronan gave one of his patented, devil-may-care shrugs. “I don’t know. Do you even want to be CEO? Or should the rest of us be putting our hats in the ring too?”

It was meant to be a joke, but I could hear the intent behind it. And so could everyone else at the table, judging by the way they all tensed. Beneath his humor lurked teeth as sharp as any of ours. Ronan was just another shark circling the water, waiting for the scent of blood.

“Never doubt it.” I stared at him for five long seconds until he looked away.

The others looked away.

Owen cleared his throat. “As I was saying, we should put the Ventnor acquisition up for a vote tomorrow after the interim CEO decision.”

I started pacing at the head of the table. “No. Pushing new risky acquisitions isn’t a good idea right now. Leave Ventnor for the next scheduled board meeting, after things calm down.”

“But that’s three fucking months from now. I’ve been working on this deal for years, and it could all fall apart.”

Shea shook her head at Owen. “Oh my God, don’t poke the bear.”

Owen just dug his heels in deeper. I would have bet ten million it was because I was saying no. “I think we should votesooner rather than later. Before the board even considers saying no.”

“The answer’s no. It’s just common sense.” I turned to Joe Kefler, a vice-chair and investment officer who had been Dad’s money manager for the last forty years. “Joe, you agree with me, don’t you?”