Page 11 of The Bad Brother

“ I ’M SORRY, JENSEN. I WISH I HAD BETTER news,” Orton Redford, Billy’s father pulls his ball cap off to scratch his bald head. “Best advice I can give you is to let me have Billy tow it back to your place, you cover it up with a tarp and leave her sit.”

At least he didn’t tell me I should take it to the salvage yard and sell it for scrap. Orton was a friend of Tank’s. Seeing his truck in this condition is probably just as heartbreaking for him as it is for me.

“Just tell me how much,” I say, dismissing his advice with a simple headshake. It doesn’t really matter how much. Whatever it costs, I’ll pay it. I just want to know exactly how many pounds of flesh I’m going to peel off my brother when the time comes.

“Well…” Scratching his head again, Orton blows out a heavy sigh.

“Electric is shot—I gotta rewire the whole thing and before they put it in the water, whoever it was took a wr ench to every rod you got. Every one of them is bent to shit.” That means a full engine replacement.

When I don’t balk, he settles his hat back on his head and continues. “Upholstery’s ruined and?—”

“How much, Orton?” I say it as gently as I can which isn’t saying much considering my patience ran out a while ago.

“If you’re set on repairs, it might be best if I have Billy take it to a shop in Fort Worth or maybe Dallas. A place that has the manpower to?—”

“You know as well as I do that Tank’d have my ass in a sling if I let anyone else but you work on his truck,” I remind him with another firm headshake. “How much.”

“More money than you’ve got and more time than I can spare,” he tells me miserably. “Even if you could afford it, I’ve got a business to run, and I’m a one man show. Billy’s good for the occasional oil change or a tire rotation but that’s about it. I wouldn’t let that boy fix my toaster.”

“I’m a patient man.” And I’ve got more money than you think. “I’m willing to wait if you’re willing to work.”

“I’d have to work on it between clients,” he warns me. “It’ll take me months.”

“I don’t care how long it takes,” I tell him plainly. Digging into the front pocket of my jeans, I pull out what’s left from my trip to the bank yesterday—eighty-five hundred dollars. “This should be enough to get you started. When you need more, give me a call.”

Shoving the money into his hand, I leave a slack-jawed Orton standing in the middle of his garage with a hand full of cash and head back to the shitty little hatchback I bought yesterday after I left the bank.

It has about a million miles on it and you have to use a screwdriver to start it but as far as I’m concerned, that was a selling point.

My brother isn’t finished with the latest round in his endless game of fuck with Jensen .

Better he fucks up a car that’s already fucked up, rather than something I actually care about.

Leaving Orton to start on my truck repairs, I head down Barrett’s main street on my way toward one of the two bridges that cross the river and connect Barrett to Clearwater Creek.

As soon as I’m over the bridge, the change is apparent.

Gone are the mom-and-pop storefronts and family-owned restaurants.

Everything in Clearwater is planned and commercialized.

Fine dining restaurants. Designer retail stores.

Pristine golf courses. Private airplane hangars attached to an equally private airstrip.

Sprawling estates, situated around a lavish country club.

Sleek, riverfront condos where the heirs and the spares live, waiting for their turn to control the family money.

From what Tank told me, a team of wealthy investors, fueled by millions made in oil and led by the Barclay family, swept in about fifty years ago and bought the land north of the river from Barrett county with the intention of building an affluent suburb that was close enough to Dallas to remain relevant but far enough away that you could breathe.

A place where the uber rich can live a quiet life of idle luxury and grow their wealth in peace.

My grandfather, Nathaniel Jensen Pryce I, was on that original investment team—when he died, the torch was passed to my father, Nathaniel Jensen Pryce II.

As the third in line—Nathaniel Jensen Pryce III—I should be perfecting my golf swing and negotiating my next oil deal, right about now.

Instead, I’m the proud owner of a dive bar on the wrong side of the river and a criminal record that’ll keep me from voting in the next presidential election.

Matter of fact, the only thing I have left to prove I was born a Pryce is the thirty-million-dollar trust fund my grandfather set up for my brother and me before he died.

I came into mine five years ago, when I turned twenty-five.

Ethan should’ve come into his a few years after I did, although with my grandfather, you never know.

I don’t garner as many stares as you’d think, driving through Clearwater in my rusty little hatchback.

Assuming I’m just the help, on their side of the river to clean a pool or change a light bulb, people turn a blind eye to the eye sore I present and go on about their Sunday like I’m not even here.

Sometimes being invisible has its advantages.

Rolling past the high school, I keep going, past the country club and the golf course that surrounds it, toward the gated community I grew up in.

Rather than crash the main gate and risk getting tossed across the river before I even have a chance to do what I’m here for, I keep driving until I find the unmanned utility gate used by landscapers and the fire department.

Tapping in the security code I bought off one of my regulars for fifty bucks, the gate in front of me slides open on its well-oiled tracks.

I’m in.

The Pryce estate is one of Clearwater’s largest. Built for my grandmother by my grandfather, it sits on over ten acres that boasts two swimming pools, a guest house, gardens, and an eight-hole golf course of its own. The only estate that rivals it is the Barclays next door .

Following the circular drive, I stop in front of the house and kill the engine before climbing out and slamming my car door hard enough to rattle the rust off its frame.

Surprised I haven’t been tackled by security by now, I climb the front steps and reach out to ring the bell but before I can, the door in front of me is opened.

Standing in the wedge of it is a trim, older woman in a pressed, white button-down shirt and a pair of perfectly creased, black dress pants.

Olga, my parents’ house manager.

Before that, she was my nanny.

“Mr. Jensen…” When she realizes it’s me and not some random stranger who managed to slip through the cracks, Olga’s stern expression softens. “What are you doing here? You know?—”

You aren’t welcome.

You’ve been disowned.

I’m supposed to call the police if you show up.

Instead of letting her finish, I interrupt her. “Are they home?”

Sighing, Olga shakes her head. “Your father is at the club and your mother…” Her gaze darts to the left, toward the side of the house the pool is on. “Is resting. By the pool.”

Resting.

It’s what she used to say when my mother was drunk and didn’t want to be bothered. Not by Ethan. She always had time for my little brother. Never hid from him. Never shooed him away with a not now, I’m busy or that’s not my job—go find Olga .

Shaking her head, Olga tightens her features into a stern mask, while her soft brown eyes glisten with unshed tears. “You’re not welcome here. You need to leave before I call the Sheriff.”

Olga shuts the door in my face before I can argue my case but that’s okay. She told me everything I needed to know.

Thanks, Olga.

Walking the length of the porch, I step off of it to follow a cobblestone path woven between carefully manicured hedges, around the side of the house and into the backyard.

Stepping onto a carpet of thick grass, I see my mother immediately, lounging by the pool in a designer bikini, eyes closed, a mostly empty pitcher of what I assume is straight vodka on ice, melting next to her on a nearby table.

Next to it is a brown prescription bottle. That’s mostly empty too.

She has no idea I’m here until I stop next to her, blocking out the sun and casting her chaise in shadow.

“Olga—be a dear and freshen my drink,” she says without bothering to open her eyes.

“I can’t say for sure,” I say in a tone that’s deceptively casual. “But if history is any judge, I’d say you’ve already had plenty.”

As soon as she hears my voice, my mother’s eyes fly open, mouth wide to screech at whoever’d be stupid enough to disrupt her pool time., It’s been a while but when she recognizes me, her thin mouth curls in disgust.

“What are you doing here?” she spits up at me, bleary gaze narrowed into a glare. She’s half in the bag as usual. Some far, distant part of my heart twinges at the sight of her. It’s been years since I’ve seen either one of my parents—not since I was seventeen .

Instead of answering her, I ask her a question of my own.

“Where’s Ethan?”

When I mention my brother, my mother’s eyes widen again and she instinctively presses a trembling hand to her stomach because Ethan is the child she loves and my showing up here, looking for him, is a threat.

“He doesn’t live here anymore,” she tells me in a haughty tone.

“He lives with his fiancé—he’s getting married.

” The last is delivered in a ha ha, he’s better than you tone, telling me that she knows all about Hanna.

That I was engaged to be married too, but that she cheated on me because I wasn’t man enough to keep her.

“I heard.” Shoving my hands into my pockets, I give her a nod. “I just wanted to come by and congratulate him.”

She knows I’m lying.

My brother and I haven’t exchanged a kind word since the day I was arrested.

“I don’t know how you got in here but?—”

“I grew up here, Mom. It wasn’t that hard.

” Hands still dug into my pockets, I look around.

“This was my home too, remember?” Ethan and I used to run wild over these grounds together.

We were inseparable. Best friends. Somewhere along the way, he started to hate me. They all did, and I never even knew it.

“Don’t call me that.” She spits it at me like venom. “I’m not your mother and this isn’t your home anymore, remember ?”

Even though it’s not anything I haven’t heard before, it still stings.

These people aren’t your family .

They were never your family.

“Next time you see Ethan, Monica , let him know I stopped by looking for him,” I tell her, backing away slowly.

Maybe she’s not as drunk and medicated as I thought because when I mention Ethan again, she hears the threat in my tone and sits up even further before she starts screeching. “ How dare you . If you touch one hair on my baby’s head, I’ll call the sheriff. I’ll?—”

“The Sheriff? Go ahead.” I laugh giving her a cruel smile, playing the part of villain that she and the rest of them cast me in, years ago. “He’s family.”

Before she can start screeching at me again, I turn around and walk away without looking back.