Page 30 of The Biker's Brother

“Go on.”

“I opened his laptop and pulled up search history. He’d been researching ways to commit suicide. Judging by the number of articles he’d read on the subject, he was most fascinated by the deadly combination of tequila and acetaminophen.”

“He was going to have you sign a will leaving everything to him and then you were going to accidentally mix painkillers with tequila.”

“Yeah. I was probably going toaccidentallydo that while he was at work because I was so distraught about walking into doors and falling down.”

After a few minutes of silence, Brand pressed for more. “What did you do?”

“I grabbed a few things that had sentimental value and threw them into a bag. Along with the will. And more or less ran out of there. On the way down in the elevator I called my dad and told him to come pick me up. I waited downstairs because I knew one thing and that was that I never wanted to be alone with Trey again.

“You can imagine what my dad’s reaction was when he saw me. I was afraid he was going to go after Trey himself.”

“If I had a daughter, that’s what I’d do. I think that’s what most men would do.”

“Well, I begged him not to. Not because I didn’t think Trey deserved a taste of what I’d experienced, but because Trey’s the sort who would press charges and then my family would be involved in a scandal. That kind of thing is bad for business and there are thousands of families who are counting on a paycheck that originates with my dad.”

She sounded like she took the weight of that responsibility seriously. Brandon knew exactly what she was talking about. Few people ever had the chance to find out that it could be a burden to know that a lot of people were depending on you to make good decisions and practically predict the future. Accurately.

“I stayed at home, in Weston, while divorce proceedings were started. It felt good to be in the bedroom where I grew up. Comforting. Safe. You know? Scratch that. Of course you don’t know. I can’t see a guy like you ever feeling like a victim.”

Brandon mulled that over as they inched along. It was true. He couldn’t say that he’d ever felt victimized. In that respect he’d had a good life. For that matter, he’d had a good life in all respects, his only regret being that he hadn’t grown up with his father and brother.

He cleared his throat.

“I can’t put myself in your place, but I can understand why it would feel good to be back home.”

“You can?”

“Yeah. I, ah, didn’t know I had a father or a brother until…” He stopped like he was calculating, “about ten months ago.”

“That sounds like a story.”

“Right now we’re talking about you. So go on.”

“After he was served, I was ready to get on with my life. I’d never gotten around to selling my condo. So I moved back in. My plan was to look for another job while I was waiting for the divorce to come through.

“Then he started calling, saying he knew he’d made some mistakes. He wanted another chance. He hadn’t talked to me like that since our wedding day.”

“Talked to you like what?”

“Nice.” They rode in silence for a few minutes before she said, “Maybe it would have worked if I still loved him, but I didn’t. I changed my phone number and that’s when his strategy got more intense. He started sending missives by courier.”

Brandon lifted an eyebrow and smirked a little.

“Missives? That’s a word I haven’t heard much since the seventeenth century.”

“Right. I mean letters.”

“What did they say?”

“That if I didn’t come back, where I belonged, there would be consequences. He didn’t say what. Just left it to my imagination. But since I’d already suspected he was going to try to kill me for money, it didn’t take a genius to figure out what he had in mind. I don’t know why he didn’t give it up once the plan was out in the open.”

“If anything happened to you after you reported your suspicions to your father, the police would be at his door within minutes.”

“Yes, but haven’t you noticed that people with serious money never go to jail? Evidence disappears. Juries are compromised. Things happen behind closed doors. Under the table. In the shadows.”

After a minute of silence, Brandon looked out the passenger window and simply said, “Yeah.”

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