Page 77 of Take the Blame (Seaside Mergers #3)

Chapter Forty-One

AUGUSTUS

“Please leave,” I said with zero pretense of friendliness.

I had done a lot of searching in the last few weeks, a lot of growing and a lot of forgiving too. But for some reason the sight of the man who wanted to buy my family’s company was not one I was willing to cozy up to just yet.

Said man was giving me the droll unaffected look he seemed to be known for my rudeness not affecting him one singular bit as he stared at me.

“Am I going to have to get a tattoo for you to speak to me?” Oaxaca Fernandez asked as he stood in the entryway of my shop.

I thought about the journey I just arrived from.

About the hours of anxiety that plagued me on the plane ride there.

The shaking hands and bodily tremors I’d gone through just to cross that threshold of my old life in Connecticut.

The strength it had taken to face the fears of my future and just trust myself, and I felt drained.

Emotionally and physically exhausted and the only person I wanted to see right now was the girl that would make it all better.

And the last person I wanted to see was her fucking brother.

So, with narrowed eyes, I sniped, “I think that sounds like a fair trade. If you’re going to snatch one business up from me, might as well give me some here.”

“Alright then,” he grumbled, his steps already carrying him further into the shop.

I held up my hand. “Hold on there, big guy. My time’s expensive.”

A black card as dark as his attire slashed through the air. Held between his fingers as he lifted it up. “Great, I’ve got money. I’d like your time and everyone else’s. I need the place clear for the hour.”

What a showoff. I glared, my arms finding their way around my body as I looked down at him. Were we seriously going to sell to this asshole? What a joke.

“You’re going to have to pay their rates,” I said.

“Fair.” He shrugged. “I’ll pay triple.”

I scoffed. “What? Can’t afford more?”

He looked down his nose at me. “I’m rich, not stupid. What’ll it be, Gus ?”

I stared at him. He stared right back. Something told me this guy was used to getting exactly what he wanted. But what his hard gaze didn’t tell me was if he was here because of my parents and this deal with his company… or if he was just here for me.

My shoulder touched my ear, and I lifted a look about the room. “It’s not up to me. Guys?”

The traitors were already packing their stuff. “Good luck, Gus!”

I frowned. “Seriously? ”

Ryan came up to pat my shoulder. “Look, if you rich people fighting means I get paid out for two weeks, then I say take all the time you need.”

Lana agreed as she gave me a joyous salute. “Leave no stone unturned, boys.”

“Don’t forget to ask for his blessing, Gus,” Quis snickered on his way past while Jules eyed Ox hungrily as she walked by murmuring. “I can’t believe this is going to be your brother-in-law one day.”

As the shop door closed and the room fell into silence, Ox flipped the lock on the bolt and turned to me. “Impressive.”

I huffed. “Never seen any of them move that fast in my life.”

Dress shoes clicked across the tiled flooring as the man of the hour strode his way toward me.

With every step closer, he was pulling off an article of clothing.

First his black coat that he placed neatly over the edge of Quis’s station.

Then he was loosening the buttons on his sleeve, dropping the cuff links that probably cost the down payment on this shop haphazardly onto someone else’s tray.

And then he was unbuttoning his black shirt, apparently having come prepared with nothing underneath.

He stared, and just because I didn’t want to be outdone I stared too. But to be honest he was making me uncomfortable with all the intensity.

Glowering, I looked away first, using the excuse of needing to ready my tray and materials to curb my defeat. “Could you not stare at me while you do that?”

He only scoffed before coming before me shirtless and tossing his shirt on the back of the chair.

He loomed over me, continuing to stare. I thought he was trying to intimidate me, but I soon realized he was watching.

Observing my every move as I wrapped the tattoo machines, saline solutions, creams, and surfaces.

He stayed that way until I was done. Set up and ready and waiting to pierce his skin.

He stayed that way even after, and for a moment I was reminded of the anxious pacer outside the shop as he waited for his wife to get out of the bathroom.

I sighed.

Maybe he needed to be talked into it. “So. What’ll it be?”

He fluttered eyes up to me, but pursed his lips, determined to keep his scowl.

Giving the workstation one more cutting glare he eased himself down into the seat facing away from me.

He didn’t lie back, just stayed with his back to me while rattling off a date with the instructions to put the numbers into roman numerals.

I scoffed. “What’s that?”

Probably the day he sacrificed eleven babies to become the eleventh richest man in the world. True story, he was in a magazine and everything.

“My wedding date,” he said.

Oh.

I don’t know if it was his tone—exactly the same clipped, taciturn tone he’d been holding since the moment I first met him—or the actual information, but something about the answer thawed me a little.

Sure, he was a little annoying and yes, he’d been trying to buy my family’s company, but he was a man about to get his wedding date tattooed on himself.

A man I’d seen with both his wife and his family.

Arguably, if not annoyingly, a pretty good dude.

Which made it a lot harder to keep being mean to him.

I sighed, thawing a little. “Alright then. What are you waiting for? Sit back.”

Pushing a look over his shoulder, he glared, but I could tell through the scowl that this one was different. He was hesitating. “Will it… hurt?”

I felt a small smile tug on the side of my mouth. “Where do you want it?”

Turning further toward me, he patted the top of his chest, his eyes falling to the needles of my devices once more. Everyone focuses on the needles at first .

I shook my head to ease his worry. “Not too bad. But we have a bear you can hold for moral support if you want it.”

“Don’t push it, Harper,” he snapped as he settled back into the chair and I started running through the motions of prepping his skin for tattooing.

“Don’t call me Harper.”

“Why?”

I’m sure the look I gave him was as flat as a pancake. “Your sister calls me Harper.”

And that’s all I would say about that.

The image of her shot through my mind like a star, mocking me and asking me what the hell I was doing here with her brother of all people when I’d promised her things that night in her parents basement.

Promised us things. I shook my head out of it.

The sooner I got this done, the sooner I could get to her.

Speaking of soon. This guy needed to breathe soon, if he was going to make it through this tattoo.

“Here,” I grumbled as I sat Roger, the emotional support bear, in his lap.

“Squeeze that and breathe. It’ll feel like faint scratching as I do the outline and rougher scratching when I fill it in.

It’s a fast tattoo, but I have to stencil the image first, so you have about ten minutes to wrap your head around the idea.

Shape up. I am not peeling your ass off the floor because you fainted on a numbers tattoo. ”

He winced. “Would that be pathetic?”

I gave him one of his own looks. “Yes.”

Letting out a long breath, he took the bear up in his hands and fixed his eyes above the room, focusing on the ceiling as he settled into the chair.

As promised, I let him settle for a few minutes.

The stencil actually only took that long, but if he was nervous, maybe he’d appreciate a little extra time before going under the needle.

“Well?” I asked. “Are you going to tell me why you’re here? I know you didn’t just buy out the place to have an evening alone with me.”

“Do you know the details of the deal I was negotiating with your parents?” he asked. This guy really didn’t like to mince words.

I wouldn’t either, especially not for this conversation. “No.”

“Your parents were willing to sell me your proprietary designs for three different machinery components including the one you share with your sister for a bargain price with the contingency that we take the whole SHarper Designs division as our own,” he said.

“Yeah, so?” I asked, not understanding.

“So,” he paused as he watched my hands move above his body, holding up the stencil for his inspection and approval.

When he nodded, I got to work laying it on.

“ So , it’s worth at least ten times more than that when it works in conjunction with the software your sister produced. The one that she still owns .”

“Okay?”

“While you handed over your ownership rights years ago, her ownership has never been acquired by SHarper. It still belongs to her, and your product is only half as valuable as that,” he said.

He was just telling me things I already knew, and if this was really the reason he was holding me up from my real destination today, I was going to take a rain check. I’d refund him his money from my own pocket if I had to.

“Look man, I don’t know you well, but if you’re just here to practice your pitch on me, then?—”

“To acquire the other portion of ownership, your parents were going to have to presume your sister as dead… Officially,” he said, cutting me off matter-of-factly.

My fingers stalled, my chest constricting in a knot so painful, so out of nowhere, I had to cough to clear it out.

Like a bull, he charged forward. “It’s been enough years, and they were willing to sell us everything for a fraction of its worth just to have some closure on the situation. ”