Page 28 of Reckless Love

“I’m sorry...what is happening right now?”

He stopped with his hand on the door and a glint in his eyes. “Those bastardsand agents that follow us around already think all we do in this office is fuck. So I’m playing a porno while we walk out the back door. With any luck they’ll never notice.”

And sure enough we did just that. We exited through the rear doors (the ones by the smelly dumpsters) walked across two more buildings and to an Uber waiting by the curb. We both checked ahead and behind us the entiredrive but no one followed us, and since it was later at night it was much quieter on the roads. It was easy to pick out cars.

“Do you really think they don’t know about this place?” Leo asked as the car pulled to a stop a block away from the bunker.

I shrugged. “I don’t think so. I’ve never seen them creeping around and I have security cameras posted in all directions. But even ifthey knew they clearly haven’t been able to get a warrant to go inside.” The moment this was over I was destroying everything. There were copies of the most important evidence in security deposit boxes. Everything else was getting shredded, burned, or wiped.

I couldn’t wait.

We slipped in the side door. I disabled the security system and unlocked all the locks. Once we were insideI reengaged the security system and relocked all the locks. Someone would either need a teleporter or a superhero to get in here with us.

I went straight to the wall and started stripping away the old ideas I’d unsuccessfully followed. “It’s not my father and I don’t think it’s anyone who works for him...” I stopped with my hand over the photograph of my brother. I didn’t discard him.Instead I moved him to the top of the board.

“How can I help?”

“The computer. Over there. It has a virtual private network I configured myself. Can you look up Jonathan Eubank?”

“On it.”

I did a double take of Leo’s ass as he sauntered across the room, then refocused on what I was doing. “I need pictures. Of Jonathan first, then all the rest of the commissioners.” Ihad to see them. It was how my brain ordered everything. That’s why the wall had been so instrumental in helping me reconstruct what I did a decade ago and what was happening now.

“And then after that can you analyze any odd plays from the last two weeks? Give me a list? Names and franchises would be helpful.”

It was late but I buzzed with adrenaline and the excitement that comesfrom feeling your goal finally in your grasp. Just one more hour and I might figure it out. Just one more minute and the answer might emerge.

I kept saying that for the next three hours as we covered my wall like a murder board. The commissioners on the left side, my brother in the middle, and all the strange, game changing plays we could identify on the right.

I moved Jonathan’spicture over beside William’s. “They hated each other.”

“Sometimes hate is really a mask for something else. Fear, hurt, desire. It can even be a defense mechanism.”

“You’ve just described every student at Bellingers Prep.” Bellingers was the super exclusive school all of us heirs-to-fortunes attended. It was where Marie and Natalie’s father went, where I went, where William andJonathan went. “You want to talk about toxic? We all hated each other. The bullying is insane. And then the really fun part: all these kids grow up and run their empires together.”

“It’s like royalty,” Leo mused. “Some of you are married off to merge fortunes, some are at war, secret back room dealings, spies...”

“Spies,” I repeated. “You thought I was a spy.” That word niggledat me for some reason. “So William and Jonathan hated each other at prep school, but you’re saying that maybe it was a defense mechanism.” That might make sense. William was a pretty closed off kid except for me and a handful of friends. If anyone pushed, he pushed back. His walls were firm and impenetrable.

“Hate also makes sense though. Jonathan’s family is as fucked up as ours. His dadis a real asshole. I only know this because I remember a screaming match between him and Edmund and afterward my father called him a selfish asshole. I obviously found that to be pretty ironic, all things considered. But for a selfish asshole to call that out so emphatically I got the impression old Mr. Eubank was extra wonderful.”

And by wonderful I obviously meant a horrible, horriblehuman being.

“So your father is the devil incarnate and you see another kid in your class with a crappy home life, but he’s happy and popular...you get angry. Marie said William trained Jonathan in college?”

I nodded, trying to picture Jonathan as a kid. “All I remember is thinking he was scrawny. I don’t know enough about this time period to get anywhere today. Let’s skip tocollege. Something happened that changed everything. They became friends, they struck some sort of mutually beneficial deal.”

“The middle finger to their fathers?”

“Maybe? Edmund would shit a brick if he knew William played piano.” It was the stupidest thing and really said a lot about my father’s masculinity that it could be threatened by a musical instrument.

“So this Jonathankid never threw a ball with his dad and William looks like a linebacker. Maybe they decided to actually talk one day? Realized they didn’t really hate each other. Maybe they even realized they liked each other. It must be nice to have someone to vent to about your weird rich family.” Leo shrugged.

I enjoyed having Marie to talk to these last few weeks. I hadn’t realized there was a holein my life until she filled it. I had my work friends. They spoke my language and loved the same things I loved, but I could never relate to their lives outside of work. So yeah, maybe William and Jonathan found an unlikely but needed friendship in each other.

“They go from pranking and hurting each other, to helping. Jonathan appears to be pretty fit these days.” Leo tapped the computerscreen that had some pictures from an image search.

The scrawny kid I remembered was definitely gone. Replaced by a very eligible bachelor. “How does a kid who never threw a ball wind up on the commission of the football league?”

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