Page 97 of Mad Rivals
“I could ask you the same,” he hisses. “You know we have cameras at the warehouse, right? Did you think I wouldn’t find out you were there?”
“I knew you would. I just didn’t care,” I say.
His brows rise, as does his heart rate, I’m certain, since that vein in his forehead becomes a little more pronounced.
“If this is mylegacy, I need to know what I’m getting into,” I say, putting a little extra emphasis on the wordlegacy. He can be angry all he wants. He’s not the only one.
“How did you get in?” he demands.
“Deepfake. It wasn’t hard. Your state-of-the-art system isn’t really all that secure, and you should probably be more creative with your passcodes.”
“Deepfake?” he asks.
I blow out a breath. “I took some security footage of you from the office and had someone create a video of your face. I showed it to your facial recognition thing, and boom. Access granted.”
He looks impressed, but whether or not he’s impressed with my hacking skills is irrelevant to me. The only thing relevant just walked out my door, and I will figure out how to fix that next.
“Look, you weren’t going to tell me what was going on, and now I know,” I say as I eye my father warily. “I have about a million questions, but let me start with one. Were you going to tell me about this when you handed Bradley Group over to me, or were you going to continue laundering illegal casino money through your legitimate real estate business?”
He sighs and wanders over toward the windows. He looks out over Navy Pier for a long time before he answers me.
“Remember how I told you I was injured my senior year of college?” he asks.
“Your knee.”
“Mm-hmm. I’d gotten involved in an underground poker ring, and I owed some people some money. When I couldn’t come up with the money, they beat the shit out of me. Tore my ACL with enough nerve damage that they ensured I’d never play again. I guess it was then that I vowed I’d never be vulnerable to those types of people again. Instead, I’d be the one sending the henchmen to collect payment, so to speak. It’s why I worked hard to create something out of nothing. It started as an underground ring, and when I found how lucrative it was, I saved money. I opened the development firm and ran the ring on the side. Eventually it became the members-only, high-class, luxury experience you broke into today.”
“Evidently with poor security.”
He gives me a wry look. “Evidently.”
“So what happened with Van Buren? Is that related?”
“The client I won from under him years ago was a member. Of course he chose Bradley Group for his project. I opened a line of credit for him, and he awarded me the business. Van Buren has held a grudge ever since.”
I blow out a breath. I wonder how many more examples there are of this exact sort of thing. How many clients are part of this ring? Where does it stop?
“I don’t want any part of the illegal shit you’re doing,” I finally say. My voice sounds tired. Iamtired. I feel like I’ve aged ten years in the last four hours.
“All the things I’ve done for you, done for this family,” he says, and whirls around to glare at me.
“What, Dad? What have you done?” I demand. When he doesn’t answer, I ask again, this time a whisper, as all the advantages in my life, everything that’s always seemed to comeso easily, flash before my eyes and the heavy truth falls into place. My stomach feels queasy as I ask, “What have you done?”
He purses his lips, but he doesn’t answer. Instead, he starts to walk toward my door. “That’s enough for one day. I trust you’ll keep this to yourself?”
I guess he has henchmen to ensure I do.
“Yeah,” I mutter.
“What about the girl? Can you ensure her silence?”
“She won’t tell anybody.” I try to be convincing because if I’m not, I’m terrifiedhewill find a way to silence her. I don’t know how far he’s gone, and I don’t want to know what he’ll do if he’s pressed further.
He walks out the door, and as it clicks shut behind him, I can’t help but wonder exactly how much of my life has been manipulated by my father. How many decisions he’s masterminded for me—and my siblings, too.
And for the first time, I can’t help but wonder whether he somehow arranged this thing with Kennedy, too.
CHAPTER 41: Kennedy Van Buren
