Page 166 of The Renegade Billionaire

“Customer satisfaction is down.” He rolls his coin through his fingers at a pace I’ve never seen. “I didn’t tell you because Ididn’t want you to worry. But Ace was the face of honest, reliable news—people trusted him. With the story Alistair put out about you running from responsibility, and me being born a Wells, we’re losing customers on every platform. The Reyes name has always been associated with good, while Wells is quite literally equated with the devil. If this got out, it’s a hit our reputation might not recover from.”

A hit to the head with a baseball bat would hurt less than this. Could Alistair really ruin everything my family has built with lies?

“So how do you stop him?” Madison is wringing her hands in her lap.

Grey meets my gaze over her head. We know the truth, and we can’t keep it from her—it will only make it worse when the inevitable happens.

I hold her hand with both of mine and spin her in her chair, so I bracket her thighs with my own.

“We don’t, Madison. We can’t. We have to get ahead of the story, it’s how these things work.”

“You’re going to do what, exactly? Tell the world that you might be siblings? Won’t that result in the same outcome?” Her fear is etched into every syllable, and each one cuts me to my core.

“It will. I’m sorry. If there were any other way…”

“We’ll be ready for it though,” Grey says. “It won’t be an attack on you like it was before. We’ll hire security, and we’ll do everything we can to mitigate the damage.”

“He said five days, Braxton. Five days is the festival. Is he going to do something to the festival?”

I can’t answer that because I don’t know.

“We’ll have to get ahead of it before then, Madi. We won’t let him ruin your festival.” Grey’s fingers fly over his keyboard.

“It’s not my festival, Greyson Reyes.” Madison stomps her foot under the table. “It’s ours. All of ours. That means you too. You have to stop separating yourself from the people who love you.”

“Yeah, Uncle Grey.” Sage smirks but has the good sense to jump out of Grey’s reach.

“Fine. It’s our festival. We take care of what’s ours, Madi. But it isn’t going to be easy. I meant what I said. This will be a shit show.”

My girl squares her shoulders, looks him dead in the eyes, and says, “What can I do to help?”

“It depends,” Grey says, and I already know where he’s going with this. “How good of an actress are you?”

She spins back to me so fast her hair whips the side of my head.

“Actress?” She tilts her head adorably. “I mean, I did play the old oak tree when I was in the first grade.”

So fucking sweet.

“You’ll have to do better than that, sunshine. We have to make the entire town believe us.”

“Believe what?” Her gaze jumps from me to Grey.

“That you’ve broken up,” Grey says. “Because if this deposit for twenty million dollars is what I think it is, Braxton and I are half-brothers.”

38

MADISON

“I don’t thinkI can lie to them, Braxton. Everyone else, yes, I’ll do whatever it takes, but these girls know me too well, and I’m—I’m going to need them when you’re gone.”

I don’t have to pretend. These tears are real.

After Grey found the deposit from the day after Braxton was born, they put a plan into motion. First, they called Mr. Coop and told him this was something they had to do, and if it nulled them from Ace’s will, they’d deal with the repercussions.

Then everything happened in a whirlwind of activity, and all I know right now is that Braxton and I are breaking up today, he’s going back to California for a press release, and I have to sit here twiddling my thumbs and pretending I’m heartbroken.

“I know, baby,” he says. I haven’t been far from his side since we walked in the door last night, not that any of us got more than a couple of hours of sleep. “It will be hard for me too, but with me in California, the media frenzy will never make it to Happiness or your doorstep. We’re trying to keep this as far away from you as possible.”