Page 13 of Salvaged Hearts

Heart Investments. Can you talk? Work your magic and make it a secure line.

Max

Let me get coffee, and I’ll be yours.

Greyson

“This is tremendous news,and I don’t understand why you’re not celebrating,” Reginald—Reggie—Hart was a regal, sixty-year-old embodiment of the term ‘old money’. My unclecould balance an impressive number of hats, but none were labeledsubtlety.

He looked like a kid on Christmas morning…sans the silver hair and tube of extra fat around his middle. Closer to suave Santa, I corrected internally. Despite his clear glee, my stomach had been in knots for the better portion of the last thirty-five hours. After leaving the ballet, it wasn’t Jackson or Matilda on my mind, but my own patronizing words hurled at my assistant that weighed me down. I didn’t often feel the need to apologize for the ruthlessness Harts were known for. Only one of those was applauded in our family, and it wasn’t the former.

“I’ll celebrate when the contracts are signed,” I countered flatly, turning the page on my paper as our driver took a gentle turn onto the business strip of the city center. My eyes scanned over black ink on flimsy pages, but I couldn’t absorb any of it. I was too preoccupied with running my own words on a wheel in my brain.

My watch buzzed, and I rotated my wrist to see it as Reggie continued to gush over Paxton Rhodes.

The name made my teeth grind after my conversation with her Saturday night.Everythingmade my teeth grind after that night.

I may not have put stock in her when she interviewed, but seeing her working was a whole different game. For example, my passcode had just been used to access my computer, and according to the display screen, it wasn’t even seven in the morning. Only one other person knew those codes.

Fetching my coffee.

Christ, I was as bad as Ollie insisted I was.

Irritated, I slammed the newspaper closed and set it aside as Reggie filled me in on our final starting line for the season. His son, and Ollie and my favorite cousin, Eli, was the department head, so Reggie was always up to speed on the goings on. Whileentertaining, football was way below my pay grade. I plucked a few stray dog hairs from my navy-blue jacket—my four-year-old Shepard was why I had lint rollers stashed in every office, vehicle, and gym bag. His companionship was fantastic, but it came with a perpetual furry sweater I didn’t care for. My watch chirped again, and I glanced at the face.

“Interesting.” I hadn’t actually meant to say it aloud, but…Alessandra was running through our numbers. Hell, that was belowherpay grade. I had accountants and bookkeepers for that. Over the years, my mind had concocted at least a dozen fantasies of things shecouldbe doing in my office at the crack of dawn, but none of them would make HR happy with me. Which is precisely why she’d always been—and would always be—off limits.

I tapped the icon for our head of security, bringing my phone to my ear.

His groggy voice told me I woke him. Good. Civilian life was making him lazy. “Is something on fire?”

“Morning, Mike. Can you check the footage of my office for me?”

“Christ, it’s early,” I heard the shuffle of feet and tapping of keys as he yawned, “Everything alright, sir?”

“Just humor me.”

“You got it, Commander.”

“We’ve talked about this.” We had. A dozen times, at least. Which is why I knew what his next words were about to be.

“Old habits die hard, sir.”

“Well, kill it already. I’m not your Commander. I am, however, still your superior.” I’d only just earned the rank four months before the accident. Maybe his perpetual endearing use of it wouldn’t bother me so severely if I’d been his acting Lieutenant Commander for a longer period of time, but as it was, I hadn’t earned it.

A decade served with the Navy Seals—ironically, the more pleasant alternative to submitting to my father—was cut short by some idiot getting behind the wheel drunk. All that workwas gonein an instant. One man’s selfish impulse wiped my father and my chosen career off the face of the planet in a heartbeat. I wished it was the first time fate had struck our family, but it seemed in addition to our wealth, we bore a curse to die young.

Which led me here, in the back of a town car with my uncle in his stuffy suit, running the company I never wanted. It was only Mattie that forced me to step into my place. However, I quickly realized I could use the resources two generations had built before me to fight the evils of the world from…a fresh vantage point.

He chuckled and then asked, “What am I looking for,Mr. Hart?”

“Anything unusual.”

“Alice is busy at your desk. A few photographers out front—I assume for the Rhodes announcement. I see nothing out of place.”

“Good. Thank you, Mike.”

“Feeling paranoid today, sir?”

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