Page 1 of Vows in Name Only
One
“What the hell are you talking about?” Cain Farrell snarled, surging from his chair in his father’s library.
His dead father’s library.
Barron Farrell had to be dead for Cain to step foot in the mausoleum where he’d suffered a hellish childhood. As soon as he’d graduated from college at twenty-one, he’d left and never returned for a birthday, a Christmas, an Easter or even a potluck dinner. It was bad enough he’d spent twelve-hour workdays with his father at the offices of Farrell International, the conglomerate that had been in his family for four generations. But he’d vowed eleven years ago to never again grace the hallowed halls and marble floors of his father’s historic Beacon Hill mansion.
It figured the old man would do something as contrary as having a heart attack and dying just to get Cain to break his promise.
He’d always been a manipulative bastard.
Speaking of bastards...
Cain stalked across the gleaming hardwood floor, ignoring the dark leather furniture gathered around a cavernous fireplace, the winding staircase leading to the next level, the floor-to-cathedral ceiling shelves packed with first editions of the classics his father had never bothered to read. If Cain looked too long, the memories always lurking at the edges of his mind would seize the opportunity to slither in and torment him. To inflict punishments like the ones he’d received in front of the very desk behind which Daryl Holleran, his father’s personal attorney, perched.
God, Cain hated this room. This whole goddamn house.
Fury bristled inside him. He drew to a halt in front of a large bay window, but the view of the private walled garden didn’t consume his attention. No, the other two men sitting silently in the room claimed that distinction.
Two strangers he’d never laid eyes on before this afternoon. Two strangers whose presence had been requested at the reading of Barron’s will.
Two strangers who, according to Daryl, were Cain’s brothers.
Half brothers.
“Cain,” Daryl said, his smooth baritone placating, as if he hadn’t just announced that the multibillion-dollar company Cain had been groomed to run was no longer his. “I know this is surprising—”
Cain snorted, pivoting and jabbing his tightly balled fists into the pockets of his black suit pants. “Surprising? No, surprising is Big Papi coming out of retirement and returning to the Sox. Surprising is finally discovering the location of Jimmy Hoffa’s body. Surprising is the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse riding down Commonwealth. This, Daryl, is bullshit,” he snapped.
To his credit, the older man didn’t flinch at Cain’s caustic tone. But then again, Daryl had been Barron Farrell’s lawyer for the past thirty years. The man probably had skin as thick as an elephant’s ass.
“Be that as it may,” Daryl said, picking up the small stack of papers from the desk, “it was your father’s decision, and Barron was adamant and very clear about the terms. Controlling shares in Farrell International are to go to his living heirs. But only if you and your brothers agree to remain in Boston and run the company together for the period of a year, starting from the date this will is read. At the end of the year, you can decide to helm it together, or Cain, you can buy out your brothers’ shares and Farrell International is yours. If any of you refuse to adhere to these conditions, then the company and all its subsidiaries will be liquidated and sold to the highest bidders.”
It didn’t make any more sense the second time around.
“There’s one more stipulation,” Daryl added.
“Of course there is,” Cain growled.
“It concerns you, Cain.” Daryl paused, and for the first time, Cain glimpsed uneasiness flash in the older man’s brown eyes. Which set off an almost painful tightening of his stomach. If this unflappable man was discomfited, that spelled trouble for Cain. “You must spend the next year here. In this house.”
Cain didn’t move—couldn’t. Because if he even dragged in a breath, he would explode, and the fury that howled inside him would consume this room and the people in it. Barron hadn’t been satisfied with hijacking Cain’s future. No, he had to manipulate his son into his own personal nightmare.
That son of abitch.
“So just because the asshole who knocked up my mother demands it, I’m supposed to give up my life in Washington and move here?” The bearded giant in the black thermal shirt, faded jeans and battered brown boots who Daryl had called Achilles shook his head. “She might have given me his last name, but that’s all I got from him. I don’t owe him a damn thing.”
Or you.
Achilles didn’t say the words aloud, but they quivered in the air, and Cain ground his teeth together. Of course, the possible dismantlement of the business Cain had worked on for most of his life wouldn’t affect this man. Losing the business for which he had endured the intolerant, merciless Barron, the business Cain had dreamed of one day heading...that wouldn’t concern this man either.
He hadn’t suffered for it.
Hadn’t sacrificed for it.
But Cain had.
It was his legacy. His due for surviving and outliving Barron Farrell.
