Page 39

OSCAR

A month drags by when I’m nursing a broken heart.

I study the whiskey cradled in my palm, amber swirling through the cut crystal. Its bold bite, earned from years in charred oak, can’t chase away the memory of the woman who slipped through my fingers.

Sunlight pours through the living-room window, molten gold that glints off the city’s steel-and-glass skyline. Kellan strides in, a frown carving a deep groove between his brows.

“What are you looking for?” I ask him.

“My watch.”

“Which one?”

“The one I got from you for Christmas last year.”

The watch flashes in my mind—I saw it on his wrist only days ago—but the past few weeks have blurred together: client meetings, endless work, and maybe too much whiskey poured as a nightcap to dull the ache.

My brothers are just as lost.

Just as disoriented.

It’s as if we’re unmoored without Makayla.

“Oscar!” Kellan shouts.

“I haven’t seen your damn watch!” I call back.

Sensing his glare, I lift my gaze from the Scotch and find raw sadness swirling in my brother’s eyes. This isn’t us. We’ve never faced this kind of desolation, and we have no roadmap for nursing our bleeding souls.

“I’m sorry—I’ll buy you another,” I say, the weight of inanimate things suddenly meaningless.

Kellan sighs. “It’s not about that. It’s… You know what, it’s fine. I’ll find it.”

He wants to keep fighting, to cling to the brotherhood we’ve built with Bryan over the years. I’m not sure that’s possible. Callie froze us out after the resort fiasco, and Bryan isn’t thrilled with how things ended with Makayla either.

On the sidelines, wallowing in her own petty desperation, Melanie still fires off the occasional text, claiming she wants “to talk.” As if that will ever happen after what she pulled.

“What did Bryan say about tomorrow’s conference?” Alex asks as he joins us in the living room. He doesn’t look too happy—can’t say I blame him. The way he keeps checking his phone tells me everything I need to know.

“Forget the conference. Who are you hoping to hear from?” I ask.

Alex shoots me a sheepish look. I can’t help smiling. “It’s worth a shot.”

“It’s been a month. She hasn’t answered a single call or text. I think the message is pretty clear,” I say.

Kellan shakes his head. “I’m not giving up on her, either,” he says. “We have to try again.”

“Bryan won’t tell us anything,” Alex adds.

I let out a dry scoff. “Are you surprised? He’s protecting his sister. Honestly, I’m grateful he didn’t sell his stake in the company. At least we still work together. Maybe we can rebuild the friendship in time—let’s not blow up an already fragile dynamic.”

Alex draws a deep breath and pours himself a Scotch. I watch the way his confident facade wobbles, doubt shadowing every measured move, like he’s questioning whether he should be doing this—or anything at all.

It’s my brother’s freeze response to failure.

And this time, we failed Makayla.

“He and I talked,” Alex says, settling into the armchair opposite me.

Kellan and I both stare. “You did what now?” I mumble. “When?”

“Yesterday,” he replies. “At the office. I wanted to know where we all stand, now that he’s had a chance to cool down a bit.”

“And?” Kellan chimes in. “Same as before?”

“More or less,” Alex says. “There’s some tension between him and Callie. He tried talking to Melanie about the whole thing. It’s… it’s a mess between the sisters now. He doesn’t want to get involved any further.”

I shake my head. “Women like Melanie can only control the narrative for so long. Eventually the victim mask cracks and Callie will see through it.”

“Where does that leave us with Makayla?” Kellan wonders.

“Nowhere good—at least not yet,” Alex says on a long sigh. “She’s still a sore subject for Bryan.”

“Where is she now?” I ask.

Alex meets my gaze, a faint glimmer sparking in his eyes. “Chasing her dream—where else? And remember Bryan’s main condition for the partnership: Makayla is off-limits. No contact.”

I tilt my head, a wry grin pulling at my mouth. “Which brings me back to my original question—why do you keep checking your phone, brother?”

He groans and downs the rest of his Scotch. “Kay.”

“You realize how desperate that looks, right?” Kellan says.

“I just want to make sure she’s okay.”

“We have to respect their decision, Alex,” I remind him. “I know it makes us feel ridiculous—hell, it’s offensive. Every damn day we’re shut out over what happened at that resort is torture, and I get it.”

“We all get it,” Kellan chimes in.

“But we can’t breach the agreement we made with Bryan,” I add.

Alex glances down at his phone again. “I know she reads every message I send her.”

“But she doesn’t reply. This is beneath us,” I say.

“No, what’s beneath us is us sitting here and taking it, instead of fighting for it. What the hell happened to us, man?”

Kellan sighs. “Love. Love that showed up in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“No, it was the right place, it was the right time. Were it not for Melanie, we’d still be together,” Alex replies. “It’s all on Melanie.”

I shake my head. “We’re responsible too. The moment Melanie walked into that restaurant, we should’ve pulled Makayla aside and told her everything. Given her a heads-up about who she was up against. Instead, we panicked, afraid she’d walk away from us, and now—look. She’s gone.”

Kellan rummages through the cabinet drawers and finally finds the watch I gave him last Christmas. “Ye of little faith,” he mutters, fastening it around his wrist.

“I need another drink,” I concede, but Kellan saves me the trip to the minibar and brings the whole bottle over. “Thank you, brother.”

“How’s Bryan doing otherwise?” I ask, curiosity getting the better of me. “I skipped most of last week’s executive meetings.”

“We noticed,” Kellan says.

“He still isn’t keen on hanging out,” Alex says. “Business talk is fine, but everyone’s still pissed about Sweden, so… our friendship’s on ice. Oscar, he needs time, alright?”

I snort before I can stop myself. “Everybody needs time, huh? After what Melanie did? After we got maybe a minute to explain before they treated us like we were radioactive? They all need time.”

“Oscar.” Alex tries to reason with me, but I’m one too many drinks in—and too angry.

“No.I’m right. You both know it. We’re still the civil ones here. In the meantime, Melanie gets to prance around and spew her venom, and we’re supposed to take the high road? Even now?”

“What do you suggest, then?” Kellan asks.

My blood boils, but a solution forms—the one thing we swore we’d never do. “Reach out to our PI buddy,” I say.

“What?” Alex gasps.

“We’ve all been thinking about it. Might as well do it,” I reply with a shrug.

“Have him look into Melanie again. She’s under the impression that she won the war.

Given her filthy and predictable character, she’s too busy gloating to watch her back.

Soon enough, if she hasn’t already, she’ll find someone else to squeeze and ultimately destroy. Why give her that satisfaction?”

Kellan thinks it over, and Alex notices. “Kel, don’t tell me you’re considering it.”

“It’s worth a shot.”

“It is, I reiterate. It might not get any results, but it’s worth a shot. Maybe then… Maybe then Callie and Bryan will see who they’re dealing with,” I add. “Though I still maintain that somewhere deep down, Callie is definitely aware of how extreme her sister can be. I think she’s in denial.”

“Exposing Melanie might be the switch Callie needs too,” Kellan says, following my train of thought.

“Maybe we can talk to her,” Alex suggests.

“To whom?”

“Melanie.”

“You’re joking,” I say.

He shakes his head. “She knows the truth. She’s profiting from the lies. Maybe, somewhere deep down, there is still that version of Melanie that loves her sister. If we could… I don’t know, make her see how much she’s hurting Callie, it could at least get her to open up.”

“Melanie chose money and chaos over everything,” I remind him. “She knew the Sweden trip was Bryan’s proposal. She waltzed in and stirred the pot because she doesn’t care about Callie. But you just gave me another angle, Alex—thanks.”

He frowns slightly. “That wasn’t my intention.”

“It’s very honorable what you’re trying to do here, brother,” Kellan says. “You’ve always been the peacekeeper among us. But we’re not at peace anymore.”

“We’re at war,” I add.

It’s time we started acting like it.

“It’s our turn,” Kellan agrees. “We just need to build an ironclad case against her. We start with our PI’s upcoming research, and we end with the settlement we already paid.

And the non-disclosure agreement she signed as part of that settlement is about to come back to bite Melanie in the ass.

We held off on this because we didn’t want to hurt Callie in the process… you know, collateral damage.”

“I don’t know about you, Alex, but I’m done being the better man,” I say.

There is no way in hell I’m letting an unstable fiend like Melanie destroy everything we worked so hard to build.

It’s bad enough we’re struggling to keep our friendship with Bryan from eventually sinking.

It’s bad enough we can’t go anywhere near Makayla just yet.

It’s bad enough we already paid through the nose to keep Melanie from running her lying mouth around town, only for her to do it anyway once greed set in.

What she did in Sweden cannot go unpunished.

Legally and morally, she has to pay.