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Chapter twenty

Reece

I stare at the glass full of rum as I remind myself for the hundredth time that drinking isn’t the answer. Then I lift it and down the whole thing, slamming the cup on the bar and waving the bartender over for another one.

“I think you’ve had enough for one night, mate.”

“I didn’t ask for your opinion,” I growl, pushing my glass towards him.

He sighs, before grabbing it and filling it only a quarter of the way full this time. “This is your last one, and I’m only doing it because I can tell you’re going through something right now and you’re not bothering anyone but yourself.”

“I’m not paying you for small talk,” I grumble, grabbing the glass and pulling it between my hands as I stare down at the amber liquid.

I count down from ten, then take a deep breath, trying to calm my frazzled nerves. What the fuck am I doing? Bower and King are lost out there somewhere, and I’m sitting in a bar, drinking. I’m such a fucking screw up .

But I couldn’t stay in our house a moment longer. The quietness of the space without Bower’s booming voice or King’s sharp wit was more than I could bear. They’ve been missing for an entire week. A week. They left Perth and hours later, they just vanished off the radar. No distress call, nothing.

I’ve paid the top search and rescue team in the world to look for them, but they are coming up empty-handed. Now they are just flying all over the Indian Ocean, looking for any sign of them or their plane.

The thought of losing them brings up too many memories. Ones that still haunt me to this day. Combine them with what’s happened now, and I’m not sure I’ll ever recover.

The thought has me grabbing the glass and tipping it up and swallowing the entire thing. I pull a hundred from my wallet and push it towards the bartender as he passes by.

“I’ll grab your change.”

“Keep it,” I grumble.

“Are you sure? That’s like a fifty-dollar tip.”

“I said, keep it,” I say in frustration, not wanting to talk to him any longer as I turn on my stool, planning to stand and get out of here. But I’m stopped by a tall blonde woman who eyes me up and down, a smirk on her lips.

“What?” I say gruffly, not liking the way she’s eyeing me.

She raises one of her perfectly shaped brows at me, as if I’m the one being weird.

“Move,” I try again, ready to leave.

“Hey buddy,” the man on the bar stool next to me says as he stares at her with wide eyes. “Don’t you know who she is?”

I glance back at the woman, but she doesn’t look familiar to me .

“No, and I don’t care.”

“Dude! That’s Clarissa Parks.” When I continue to stare, he huffs in disbelief. “The porn star! Do you live under a rock or something?”

I eye her carefully, trying not to show my distaste. I didn’t want to be cruel, and I don't care how anybody chooses to make money, but I believe sex should be between two consenting adults who care for one another. Which is exactly the reason I was celibate.

“I don’t watch the stuff,” I finally answer and he reels his head back in disbelief.

“I could give you a private show. You are pretty hot, you’ve got this whole grumpy thing going for you,” the woman, Clarissa, says as she tries to trail her finger up my arm. I immediately push her hand away and, as gently as possible, push my way past her.

“No, thanks.”

“I guess he’s gay,” I hear the man say as I head for the exit. Let them think whatever they want, I don’t care what people think about me.

I was in the limelight enough as it was, so my name was constantly thrown around the tabloids. ‘Benson Jr: CEO or Kingpin?’ or ‘Benson’s Business Under Fire’ or my personal favorite, ‘Titan Tech Triple Threat’ .

My stomach tightens at the thought of my business partners, my best friends, and my brothers. We might not share blood, but I was closer with them than anyone in my family. They were the ones who saw a grieving teenager and pulled his head out of his ass long enough to make something of himself.

If it wasn’t for them, who knows what would have happened to me. My father’s idea of helping me was to yell at me or ignore me, there was rarely a middle ground .

I step outside and spot my driver waiting. “Hey Arnold, take me home, please,” I tell him as he opens the back door for me.

“Of course, sir,” he says kindly before closing my door and moving to the driver's side.

My phone buzzes in my pocket and I pull it out, groaning when my dad’s name flashes on the screen.

“Dad, to what do I owe this pleasure?”

“Have you been drinking, son?”

“Why do you care?”

I hear his heavy sigh over the phone. He’s been trying to get me back into his office for the past five days. Apparently, two days was plenty of ‘grieving’ for the two men so close I considered them brothers.

“Look, son. Tomorrow it will be eight days. You’ve got men out there looking, there’s nothing more you can do. Get a good night’s sleep, then come into the office with me tomorrow. Working will help distract you.”

He means well, but the last thing I want is to be distracted. If anything, I needed to be more focused on a solution. I owned a god damned leading AI company, and I still didn’t have any tech to help me find them.

“Dad, with all due respect, if I do make it into the office it won’t be yours. It will be to Titan Tech.”

“Now, Reece, I know you love that company, but why don’t you give that a little rest while you heal?” Even though the three of us had made Titan Tech a billion dollar company, my dad was always pressing for me to continue with him and drop the ‘computer nonsense’ as he so eloquently put it.

I stare out the window at the passing buildings and when I see Black Diamond Sushi, a pang of anguish hits me. That was our favorite place to eat. Bower would always drag us there to celebrate an accomplishment in the business or even just to celebrate the weekend.

If there was anything Bower was good at, it was living life to the fullest. Fuck, I missed him. That reminds me I haven’t eaten anything since this morning.

I lower my phone as I lean forward. “Arnold, can you swing us by Burger King, get me my usual and whatever you want for yourself.”

“Of course, sir.”

“Reece?” I hear my father’s voice and raise my phone from where I had it pressed into the seat, forgetting he was still on the line.

“Not tomorrow, dad, I’m busy. I gotta go now, talk to you later.” I hang up before he can respond. Letting my head rest back on the seat, I let out a deep breath.

How am I supposed to navigate my business, my dad and my life, without them? I’d do anything for them and if I knew how to find them, I’d literally do whatever it takes for that information. Even getting on a plane, despite my paralyzing fear of flying.

If it’d bring them back, I’d even try to be nicer to the girlfriends they brought around. But they had terrible taste. Every last one of them was either a gold digger, a liar or a homewrecker, and there was no way I was going to let my brothers get hurt by a woman.

I couldn’t even fathom being in a relationship since my first girlfriend left me in such a terrible fashion. The heartbreak that had given me made me realize that the saying was wrong. It was not better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

But Bower and Kingsley weren’t bitter like me.

They had big hearts, and I knew they both wanted a woman to cherish and care for.

Someone to come home to each night. But therein was part of the problem.

We had agreed we wanted to keep living together, even if they got married.

So then their wives would have to get along with each other and, the hardest part, me.

It wasn’t that I didn't get along with women. We had plenty of female employees. It was girlfriends that I had a problem with, even when they belonged to Bower and King and not me.

Arnold passes me my food as we pull back onto the road and I shove fries in my mouth as I contemplate what to do tomorrow.

I could try contacting another search and rescue team, but I already told the first one to hire as many additional guys as they needed to comb every inch of that ocean.

Maybe my dad was right, and a bit of distraction would do me good. I could head into the office and see what progress has been made on the latest project. Maybe taking my mind off of the guys for a little while will help me see the problem with new eyes.

Biting my burger, I swallow heavily, everything tasting like lead these days. I wonder what they’re eating right now? Are they stuck on a raft out there somewhere, slowly starving to death?

I refuse to think that they’ve already died. It’s not something I can even let myself consider, despite knowing the odds of finding them at this point are about five percent, thanks to an earlier online search. They’ve defied the odds plenty of times before, and they are going to do it again.

Because if they didn’t, then what the fuck was I going to do?