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Fallon

I woke up at three a.m. with Brent holding onto me like I would slip out of his grasp. My nightmares were getting worse and now I unlocked a new fear—sexual assault. Not to mention stalking and being watched without my knowledge. All of it freaked me out and sleep didn’t come easy when you were freaked out and on edge most of the time.

Luckily, I didn’t throw up and felt like having a snack. Brent didn’t budge as I slipped out of bed and made my way into the kitchen.

That man from earlier who was holding onto Brent was still here. He was wearing a pink ski mask?

“Uh, hi.” I waved. I glanced over at what he was doing, and he was watching cat videos and drinking with his feet up on the coffee table. “I’m Fallon.”

“Reaper,” he grunted and put in a headphone under his mask.

Guess I interrupted something important. He was in my house, the least he could do was be respectful or say something to me. He was worse than Brent and looked three times as weird. Who covered their face like that?

“Do you like pink?” I sat down with a box of Chinese leftovers that James had brought for me. Craving lo mein when I felt like crap was my go-to. If I could hold my food down, this would bode well.

He didn’t respond.

I threw a roll of paper towels at him, and he caught them mid-air. “I’m watching something. You don’t have to be so annoying so early in the morning.”

“Do you want any food?” Anything to make this interaction less odd, actually.

He sighed and took out his earbud and made his way over to me. There was attitude in the way he walked. It was like he was a petulant child in a grown man’s body.

I handed him a plate. “Thanks,” he grumbled.

“Does anyone see your face and live?”

“No.”

“Is that why they call you Reaper?”

He took the stack of napkins from my hand. It was funny watching him eat through a mask. “They call me Reaper because that’s what I’m good at.”

“How long have you worked for the Vaughns?” I didn’t know why I was interrogating the brooding, large man whose face I couldn’t see, but I had bad nightmares and needed a distraction and Brent was knocked out cold. The least I could do was get to know the people that would be around me the majority of the time.

“Long time, little girl.” He scooped piles of food out of the containers and onto the plate without so much as a glance in my direction.

What an odd human. “Does that mean you’re old?”

“Old enough. Why do you ask so many questions? Eat your food.”

I heard a faint meow from the corner of the living room and a small, grey cat came out from hiding and pranced its way over to us.

“When did that get here?”

“That’s Pumpkin. I found her stuck in a pumpkin patch and took her home.”

If Pumpkin lived at his house, it made no sense as to why she was at my house. “Why is she here?”

He shrugged and continued eating. Pumpkin jumped into his lap and laid down to take a nap after he gave her a piece of meat from his plate. Who knew scary looking men had affinities for little kittens? They looked happy together.

“She likes to travel, and I figured you might like her. What’s got you up so early?”

Shoving food around on my plate with my fork, I rested my chin in my hand. That was a great question. “I couldn’t sleep and Brent snores.”

“Good to know—I’ll write that down for our next meeting. Snores. Do you need pills to sleep? I have great ones for insomnia. It’s called melatonin.”

Brent really should have warned me about this guy. Not only was he...strange, but he had the weirdest sense of humor. I never thought someone could be this dry but so witty at the same time. And he liked cats.

What did this guy get into in his free time?

“Do you always wear this pink ski mask?”

“Do you always ask a lot of questions?” His eyes flicked to mine as he ate. He had thick eyebrows and haunting green eyes.

“Sorry,” I grumbled.

“Here’s a sight I never thought I’d see.” Brent was in the hallway leaning against the wall.

Reaper grunted again. “Your girlfriend is chatty.”

“Why don’t you come back to bed, babe?”

They were both so casual about everything, but with what I could only assume they saw on a regular basis, what I was going through was probably a walk in the park for them. Brent and his men were out torturing and killing people in their line of work and organizing illicit trades, a straightforward situation like mine had to be easy.

He was also back to calling me babe again.

“I can’t sleep. I have a meeting with Evans today and there’s just too much going on in my mind right now.”

I didn’t know what to expect from going to New York. The meetings became need to know only after Evans pulled certain people out of the company. Cleaning house was going to be messy, and the fallout would be insane. We had rats in the legal team who worked in tandem with my aunt to give her certain rights to what was mine with documents signed and forged in my name.

Before I turned eighteen, she was my legal guardian and signed everything as such. We combed through the documents; she forged agreements under my name that she would make decisions through lawyers until I was twenty-one. That meant she had secret plans to pull the company out from under me on my birthday.

Evans would have questions to answer as to how this happened under him and all the names of those who may have seen those documents or let this happen. Augustus Vaughn was right about cleaning house.

How much death would come from those words, time would only tell.

Brent lightly rubbed my shoulders and played with my hair. “How about a movie? We have time to kill, and I hate to see you miss out on sleep.”

“Actually, since you’re both here...”

Reaper gave me a look of annoyance. He didn’t like to be bothered by the looks of it.

“What is it?”

“I’m about to find out how many people have been secretly working behind my back to pull the rug out from under the company. Why they wanted to ruin the company makes no sense to me since everyone gets paid well and the company is a successful one.”

Brent looked at me with pity. “It’s always about money and power. You’ll never see a relaxing day in our world. We handle backstabbers daily and it's because someone offers them more than what they’re getting. Greed is a nasty thing. So is envy over those who have more than you.”

“Says the uber rich guy.”

“Don’t call the kettle black, pot . If I get to a point where I run my grandfather’s conglomerate, I’m not planning to be a stuck-up asshole about it. What I won’t accept are those with unending greed that jeopardize other people.”

“I suppose.”

“What type of leader do you plan to be? You’re set to inherit one of the top companies that is built on luxury. You service uber rich guys like me.”

Fine, he had a point. There was no denying that I was born into this and now had to wrestle with my own personal morals surrounding the elite. I was the elite. It didn’t feel like it, but it was true, and this part of society was nothing like the others. Endless money created more than simple first-world problems.

We had a hand in shaping the entire world.

“I never thought about the whole me being a leader part.”

He stroked my hair and planted a kiss on my head. “So, let's sit and watch a movie. We have to get you through the worst of it before then.”

I fell asleep during the movie and James coming in around seven woke me back up. Brent wasn’t on the couch with me, but I was silently grateful no one saw me sleeping curled up with him. I still wanted to keep my distance from him romantically. Business had to come first, and we couldn’t complicate things by getting our personal lives twisted up in the height of this situation.

The trip to New York was lonely and long. James was silent. I figured he had nothing to say—he probably didn’t want to freak me out or put me on edge. It was still early in the day and the lobby to the offices was a deserted wasteland. No hustle and bustle yet.

“Miss Montgomery,” the doorman nodded at me.

“Good morning.”

The elevator dinged, sending off alarms in my body and spiking my adrenaline again. If the elevator could crash and send me to my death, that would have been preferable.

“Evans,” I nodded, walking into the boardroom. Not many men were in attendance.

“Miss Montgomery.” He set down an envelope. “I’ve come with news today. We are aware of documents withheld from company knowledge.”

I sat in the chair at the head of the table. My place at the table. “Jason Haines called me. He told me that Sylvia Montgomery has usurped a certain amount of power out from under him. Now, she’s coming for me.”

“Your new associate will be joining us.” The door opened to reveal Brent, Reaper, and Dave in suits.

Reaper was wearing a skull mask. Could be fitting.

Brent took a seat to my right.

“As Miss Montgomery said, Jason Haines has been a thorn in the Vaughns’ side for quite some time. He now seeks pity from the very hand he burned many years ago. This is a long and quite bitter tale of jealousy.

“You see, Jason Haines was not picked as a mentee in favor of Maria Montgomery. He didn’t like a powerful woman who was smarter than him getting a one up over him in our world. Like a spoiled child, he did not accept the offer from my grandfather and set out to compete with him instead. A while later, he meets a woman by the name of Sylvia Montgomery who has the drive to destroy her sister’s life’s work. Once her sister dies of cancer, she takes to enacting her revenge on her niece, the soul heir of Montgomery Group. Jason, believing he is in bed with an ally, discovers that he is not. Back to square one, he crawls back asking for crumbs from the table.”

The puzzle pieces made sense. I only saw them from one side—Sylvia’s side and what she wanted me to see. How was I blind for so many years to her antics?

“Since this involves both of us,” Dave cut in. “We are going in on a joint effort. Our department has the skills necessary to rip weeds out by their roots. Unfortunately, the garden is overrun, and it may take some time. Evans, you have had close dealings with Augustus and should be up to speed on plans.”

The relationship between Montgomery Group and Chamberlain Industries ran so deep that someone looking too hard wouldn’t be able to distinguish where one ended and the other started. My mother left me with a very confusing situation to manage, but I didn’t think she could foresee this type of betrayal and plotting against me. She also didn’t know her aunt was going to get guardianship over me. Sylvia volunteered.

Now we know why.

“While we work on the legal nightmare, you all have the list of those who are suspicious characters from this company. I bode you well in your endeavors. Miss Montgomery, I assume you are up to speed with current events of the company’s high-level overviews this week?”

“Yes,” I replied, hoping I could hold an aura of assuredness. “My birthday is around the corner, and I am looking forward to the transition. Media training has reached out and we will begin our efforts to make me not so...me.” My heart rate was running wild. Things were happening quickly, and I was still sorely unprepared for it all.

The press coverage on a CEO transition. The news about what my movements were and how I ran a company would be brutal—my life to be scrutinized at every turn. It would be an endless twenty-four-hour news cycle, and I would be the star of it in my role. If Brent could do it, I could too, right ?

“Good. I have some meetings to attend to. Mr. Caldwell will be going over some details on legal issues with you all and... other pertinent information you should know. None of that leaves this room.” He exited swiftly and left us to our devices.

Dave pulled out a device from his bag and set it on the table.

I raised an eyebrow at him.

“This secures the room. Feel free to speak plainly.”

Reaper set a knife on the table. “This also secures the room.”

Brent tore open the envelope with a knife of his own, cutting it with precision in anticipation of what he was to find within the pages. I hoped the list wasn’t long, but that was a pipe dream. There was a chess game afoot, and we were catching ourselves up to speed. The papers were spread out with profiles of each person deemed suspicious.

“This is the list of everyone potentially involved?” He looked to me.

“From the last time I spoke to him, he was developing a list of everyone who had authorization to access documents pertaining to what Sylvia might be planning. Some of these people dealt directly with the paperwork she moved back and forth between herself and the company. Lots of documents with my forged signature. I’m hoping we have a thumb drive with the documents along with these names. James, do you have that?”

“I will by end of day.”

“Good,” I noted. “This has been a plan in motion since my mother died. This has been years of work. She kept me quiet in her home until I was eighteen and she still has certain powers over me until I’m twenty-one. Transitioning myself to CEO will be a feat if we can do it.”

He pondered on that while browsing the profiles and handing them off to his two men. The gears in his head were turning over the information, formulating a plan of attack. “I’m still trying to find the connection to everything at large. Nothing is an isolated event.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s been infighting for years. I assumed it was because of your company becoming weaker before you took over, but something else has to be going on.”

Reaper laughed at that. “Nothing classic interrogation can’t fix. Look at all the toys we have to beat on until we figure it out.”

“How do we figure out where to start?”

Brent placed his hand over mine. “Welcome to my sect of the world, Blondie. This is where we excel at things. You won't have to worry about a thing because we will figure this out.”

I worried we wouldn’t be able to figure things out. I hadn’t seen or heard from her and things just felt off . There was a tipping point feeling in my bones that kept me on edge. My sleep became shit and throwing up became the norm. Not to mention, my skin crawled from having someone touch me that didn’t deserve to, and someone admitted to surveilling me without my knowledge for years.

Paranoia wasn’t exactly the word I’d use to describe how I felt.

“I need to be involved. You can’t kick me out now.”

His men looked to him for guidance—and opinions. This small blonde girl was telling them she was to be involved when they were going out to do what it was they do. The cleaning work.

Brent didn’t look like he wanted to agree with my being involved, but what other choice did he have?

They had an entire silent conversation amongst themselves while I waited for someone to respond. I couldn’t help but wish Kelly was with me.

Mr. Caldwell cleared his throat to interrupt. “Let’s go over a few key legal details before you all get trigger happy. For one, I know nothing about what you all are about to do. Two, Fallon has legal bindings over her head until she is twenty-one. This document here outlines your guardianship with your aunt.”

“Then, it’s true. She really is planning to steal everything. No work on her end, just greed. Just a jealous woman with a ploy to steal. Even if she gets everything she wanted, she wouldn’t know what to do with it anyway.”

A saddened nod. “She may bring the end of a lot of things if she were to succeed. Here. This is the guardianship outline. This was hard to dig up and no one would have even known about it since it’s a private legal matter. What else she did outside of this I can dig up, but it looks like she’s heading towards stealing ownership.”

“How could she steal ownership if it’s clearly outlined that I takeover at twenty-one?” My mother had a legal savant write her will. The thing appeared ironclad, but again, I knew nothing of our world and how dirty one could get in order to get a leg up on someone else.

“There are a few ways in which your allies at the company wouldn’t have known, and we need to prepare for any option.” Mr. Caldwell added.

Business in the way my aunt was using it was not in my training materials. I barely understood the basics of the company and legal documents. How was I to understand the loopholes that she could have used?

I looked around the room and saw the small circle of people who were my supposed allies. Brent posed himself as my ally, but how did I know he wasn’t planning something of his own. Mr. Caldwell could be a huge liar himself. Nothing felt safe. I felt unprotected.

“What’s the most likely scenario you can think of?” My hands shook as I fidgeted with them under the table. Anxiety seeped out of every pore in my body.

“The most likely? Proxy vote manipulation or amended bylaws. Or both. We don’t know how many allies she has within the companies or how deep her plan spans. With her working with others who have a vested interest in bringing down the control Montgomery Group has; she could have multiple contingencies.”

Well, fuck.

“That thing really secures what we say in here?” I gestured to the box on the table.

Dave nodded.

I looked at Brent. “I’m going to need you to teach me how to kill people.”