Page 105 of The Bet
Chapter 31
Afew days after he’d taken Izzy to The Oasis, Tobias announced that Savannah was pregnant. It broke out in the media not long after.
And on Christmas Eve, when Tobias and Savannah hosted Christmas dinner at their apartment, Xavier could tell, now that he looked closely, that Savannah was slowly filling out. She was four months pregnant, with the baby expected around May.
He didn’t see Izzy again for the next few weeks, but she continued to complete the work he’d given her, and their communication during that time, mainly by email and text messages, lacked the deep connection he’d experienced that night at Luke’s bar.
He was in a quandary. Wanting to see her, and feeling guilty at the same time. Wanting to come clean, and afraid of sabotaging something that was so fragile and new. Maybe her feelings for him hadn’t changed, but he now saw her in a different light, and not being able to casually suggest another time for them to go out and talk, meant that he was forced to make do with only connecting to her via the work he gave her.
The main thing was, he had survived Christmas with his family. And during those days, he’d been wondering what Izzy had been doing. How she’d spent it, and with whom, and he hoped her father had been fine. A couple of times he’d almost called her, because he’d been tempted to give in and hear her voice, but somehow, he had stopped himself.
What would she think?
Because, as much as he tried not to admit to it, he cared what she thought.
With the contract with Hennessy signed and dispatched to him, he expected things to start rolling sometime at the end of January. Setting up in China, would have taken him longer, if he’d had to do it from scratch. With Hennessy and his resources, he’d be up and running much sooner, and, hopefully, with an eye to manufacturing other products out there. Not bad, given that the guy had been a recent new contact he’d acquired.
When his intercom buzzed, he answered and was surprised to hear his brother’s voice. “Are you alone?” Tobias asked, in a voice that sounded uptight.
Alone?As opposed to with someone? “Yeah, I’m alone. Why are you ask—”
Tobias buzzed up impatiently, and Xavier released the lock to let him through the communal door, then opened the door to his apartment, feeling wary. He knew that voice well. And something had pissed his brother off, something he had no clue about.
A few minutes later, Tobias strode through. “How’s business?” he asked, looking none too pleased.
“Going well,” Xavier replied slowly. “Why?” They’d only met a few days ago, on Christmas Eve. What had changed?
“Then tell me what the fuck you’re doing going into business with Matthias Rust?”
“What?” Shock hit him like a sledgehammer. “I’mnotdoing business with him.”
“You’re fucking lying.”
“Whoa,” Xavier held his hands up in a conciliatory gesture. “Calm down, will you? I’m not doing business with Matthias.” He peered at his brother’s red face. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“You signed a deal with Chad Hennessy?”
“Yes.”
“And did you know that Matthias is a partner in that company?”
He didn’t have any goddamn idea. “I didn’t know.” And even if he had, even though he knew that his brother and Matthias had parted company, how the hell was he supposed to know that they had done so bitterly? “Chad never mentioned Matthias,” he replied, anger swirling in his gut like bile.
“If you’d done your fucking due diligence, you would have known.” Tobias’s voice was brittle and hard, like glass.
“Why does it matter?” His brother could be a real ass, and Xavier hated his bullying tactics, and this, what he was doing now, barging in here like a raging bull, with his uncontrollable anger, was one of those episodes.
Tobias Stone might be a golden child in their parent’s eyes, a loving father-figure to Jacob, and a knight in shining armor for Savannah, but to him, his brother had been someone to be admired, and be afraid of, at the same time.
There was a side to Tobias many didn’t see. It was a side only a younger brother would know about, and Xavier was fed up with this bullshit.
“Don’t come here,” he warned, his voice inching up slowly. “Don’t come here barking at me, when you never had the time or decency to tell me what your problem with Matthias is. I’ve asked you plenty of times.” The silence from Tobias gave him the guts to continue. “I didn’t know about Matthias, and he never came to the meetings. His name was never mentioned, but why is it such a problem for you?”
“Because the guy is a fucking moron, and the worst thing you could have done was to go into business with him.”
“I don’t understand why you’re getting so worked up over this. I would have thought that news of a baby on the way might have calmed you down, but you’re the same as ever. Who do you think you are?”
“An astute businessman, which is why I run a fucking hedge fund and you don’t.”
