Page 58 of Hush Money
He used to tell us that “no man should starve when we got to have eight tables.”
But now, the Everett name is synonymous with greed.
It’s smeared by the man who raised me. The man who bought as much land as he could to protect his own view or to hike the price and make sure his neighbors were rich. The man who has never considered someone else’s experience. The man who had the world on his platter and decided it wasn’t enough. The man who takes advantage of everyone he possibly can and has never felt an ounce of remorse. The man who spent my whole life letting me know that I wasn’t up to his standards.
And the man who made this impossible, disgusting mess. This man who has hurt so many people.
But we’re going to take our name back. We’re going to fix this. And when we’re done, Cato Everett might still be rich, but he will have lost everything.
The doors ding open, and we walk into Julian’s living room. Sawyer is sipping on a glass of water in the corner of the kitchen, talking to Russ and Tyler. Julian is seated at the back of the apartment at his extra-large dining table, deep into a discussion with legal. I take a breath, and Evie takes my hand.
I look down at her, and she just nods.
“I’m here,” she says.
After a few minutes, we all gather in the living room, trying to have normal conversations while we wait for her to show. Julian’s phone vibrates on the coffee table, and we all collectively hold our breath.
“Wren, hi,” he says, standing up from the couch. “Oh, I understand. Yeah. Yes, we all are, but…no. Yes, yes. Whatever she…yeah. Well, would it be better if we… Yeah, okay. I’ll call you back.”
“What’s going on?” I ask before he even makes it back into the room with us.
“She’s here, downstairs with Wren in the car we sent. But she’s having a bit of a panic attack. Wren offered to take her back home, but she doesn’t want to leave. She’s just…stuck.”
We all get quiet.
Goddamn Cato. May he one day feel every ounce of pain he’s put these women through.
“Can I try talking to her?” Evie pipes up, and all of our heads whip to her.
“Eve…” I start to say. I want to protect her from this as much as I can. I don’t want her to be involved in this any more than she has to be. But if I learned one thing from my brother and Sawyer over these last few months, keeping the people who love you at bay doesn’t help anybody.
She squeezes my hand.
“I do this for a living,” she says. “Plus, I know a thing or two about being around mediocre men who think they can have and do whatever they want.”
We all look at each other. Julian looks to me, but I look back at her.
“If anyone can do it, it’s you, baby,” I tell her. She smiles.
“Okay,” Julian says. “Let me call Wren.”
He steps out of the room for a second, and Sawyer looks at Evie.
“You got this,” she says with a wink. Evie beams at her.
“I’m going to do my best,” she says. Julian covers the bottom of his phone and nods at us.
“She said she would give it a go. You can go down,” he says.
I draw in a long breath.
She steps up on her tiptoes and leaves a short, sweet kiss on my lips.
“I’ll be back,” she says. I nod, and then I let her go. Talking to people, getting to know people…it’s one of Evie’s gifts. It’s the reason I fell in love with her all those years ago. Not just how she does it with me, but how she does it with everyone else. The way she can meet someone and know their life story in ten minutes. How she finds basic connections with humans based off their coffee order or the concert t-shirt they’re wearing.
I knew she would be a phenomenal social worker. Because where some people run away from hard things, she runstothem. She runs in the direction of the danger. In the direction of the difficult. In the direction of the people who need someone like her in their corner.
And as much as I hate the idea of sending her off to undoubtedly get to know this woman and to immerse herself in the mess that my father has made, I know I need to. For Ally. For the case. For my brothers. And for me.
