Page 27 of Mason

I push my chair out and stand. “Grady, a word?”

He finally looks up from his scrap of paper with a smirk. “I’m kidding. Mostly.”

Our men laugh, and for the first time, I feel like I’m looking at a stranger rather than my brother.

* * *

Our men shuffle out when the morning meeting is over, but I block Grady’s path before he can slip out and slip his dick into a whore or his lips around another bottle of booze.

“Oh, no you don’t,” I say, boxing him in when he goes to stand. “We need to have a little chat, brother.”

He smiles. “Come on, man. You know I’m just fucking with you.”

“You don’t fuck around during meetings in front of our men,” I grind out. “Especially about any of that.”

“We’ve talked about ramping up intake for a while,” he retorts, rolling his eyes. “Is that what you’re mad about?”

That, and so much fucking more.

I cock my head at him, feeling the furious heat hit my face. “You’re planning on tripling it with our current crew and numbers? Does Dad know about this, or are you trying to make moves to impress him? Because this is the wrong fucking way, dude.”

He could destroy everything our family’s worked for. Everything that ever mattered to Spencer. Everything that matters to me anymore.

“You might know more about his feelings on the matter if you didn’t storm out of our meeting the other day in a fucking tizzy,” he snarls.

I explode, gripping the arm of his chair and whirling him so he has to face me. His back presses to the wall, giving him no wiggle room to escape. “Because Dad likes to throw around accusations, much like you apparently.”

“I haven’t made any accusations!” he defends, trying and failing to stand as I knee him in the chest.

I keep the joint pressed snugly to his sternum. “You told our men you want to kill Giambelli’s daughter if he was involved in Spencer’s murder. You can’t plant those seeds of doubt without proof. That’s asking for trouble.”

All it takes is one misguided vigilante and we’re fucked.

“Did you not say the same fucking thing to Dad?” he shoots back, grabbing at my knee to create space I have no intention of giving him.

“No, I asked if they were connected. I didn’t go spouting off about killing a woman.”

The brunette may be a grade-A pain in my fucking ass with a mouth the size of Texas, but she’s innocent. She doesn’t need to die.

“She’s a Giambelli. She doesn’t count.”

I shove off of him, disgusted. “Every woman counts,” I correct, fighting the urge to connect my fist with his jaw. Who is this person? “We don’t even know if she’s alive. What if the same person who killed Spencer killed her?”

He rolls his eyes and pushes to stand. “They would’ve left Giambelli a present. You don’t just leave one family with their relative’s face looking like a squeezed orange. Someone has her or she ran away. Like Dad said, it’s a little too fucking convenient.”

“Then the Giambelli theory makes no fucking sense,” I snap. “Giambelli wouldn't kill Spencer and leave his kid up for grabs.”

Grady shrugs. “Unless he wants to be free of her. Wiping us off the face of the earth makes his life easier. A dead daughter justifies that to the other families to avoid a war.”

I consider it for a moment, chewing over the details as I study him. It still doesn’t explain whatever Dixon heard to make him think one of us wants her dead. A dead Emily wouldn’t do anyone favors, especially those of us with the Carlyle name. It’d just put a huge fucking target on our backs.

Grady’s expression doesn’t change. “Think about it, Mason. Stop raging and acting like a wild man and start treating this like a fucking chess match. Not everything is black and white in our world. You know that.”

“The intake increase is,” I say, pushing Emily to the back burner. “It’s stupid. The schedule that Spencer set up has worked for years.”

He lets out a sigh, sliding an exasperated hand over his face. “Well, his way didn't exactly work out for him, now did it?”

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