Nick watched him take a sip.
When he was done, he got his brother’s attention when he said, “Maybe this is penance for me bein’ an asshole. Havin’ it good growin’ up, unlike you, unlike Ma, and still givin’ her shit. Dad shit. You shit. Actin’ like a motherfucking twat. Maybe that’s it. Why it was the way it was with Hettie. Why shit went down the way it went down with Olivia. I don’t know. I could think on that for millennia and never know. I just gotta keep movin’ through it and hope I find a life where I walk over some threshold into my version of the perfect world.”
Knight opened his mouth to speak but he didn’t get in there because Nick didn’t stop.
“What I do know is, I might have been an asshole twat, but I learned not to be that. I also learned other things. From you. From Hettie. From Dad, Mom, Anya. And something Hettie gave me was how to read people. And I know to my balls, brother, that Olivia Shade deserves a lot more than just being saved from an orange jumpsuit. Her father being responsible for Hettie’s death, my mission to make him pay, to finish her job, bring him to justice, it can’t be me who gives her more. But to my balls, Knight, I know she deserves it.”
Knight heard him. Knight always listened. It was just in the last four and a half years Nick noticed he did.
And this time when his brother heard him, Knight offered, “You want anything from me?”
“I want this done so Olivia can be free to find herself some motherfucking happy. But you can’t help with that so you’re doin’ what I need you to do. Just bein’ the big brother I never let you be.”
“Not a hard job, Nick,” Knight said.
“Not anymore,” Nick replied.
Knight gave him another look then took another drink.
After that, thankfully, they dropped the subject.
Nick went home.
He did not sleep.
*
Knight
8:23 – The Next Morning
After making love to his woman and with her curled close, Knight had slept soundly.
But he woke with things on his mind.
So he made the call.
And he gave the order.
“Find everything. Do it invisible. Give it to me. And however you do it, it never leads back to Nick or me.”
“You got it,” Sylvie Creed, one of his closest friends and an ex member of his team, being ex because she now lived in Phoenix with her husband and kids, replied.
Knight hung up feeling better.
Sylvie and her man Tucker, both PIs, two of the best in the business, would get him what he needed.
Which meant they’d get what Nick needed.
Nick wanted to do this on his own.
He could do that.
He didn’t need to know until it was time to know he had help.
Chapter Fifteen
An Eye
Nick
10:12 – Tuesday Morning, Two Weeks Later
“Nick, that Ralphie guy is on the phone again.”
Nick looked from his desk to Bernadette, his assistant who was hanging from both hands on the doorjamb, her torso swinging inside his office while her lower body remained out of it.
He gave her the same answer he gave her the last three times over the last week and a half that this Ralphie guy had called.
“I’m hopin’ I’m makin’ this clearer than the last three times I said it, Bernie. That bein’ I do not want to take a sales call from an art gallery, any art gallery or any sales call.”
“I told you,” she stated irritably. “He’s not sellin’ you something. He says someone bought something for you and he needs to make an appointment with you to install it.”
“Bullshit, Bernie, it’s a gimmick to get me on the phone.”
“I thought that but the reason he keeps calling back after I tell him we’re not interested and we don’t want to be on their call list is that he insists someone bought some painting for you.”
Nick looked back to his desk, ordering, “Find out who supposedly bought me some fuckin’ art so I can call them and tell them I don’t need any fuckin’ art.”
“Righty ho, jefe,” Bernadette replied.
Jefe.
Jesus.
She called her husband Dante that too.
Why he hired a smartass assistant, he had no idea. She’d even been smartass during the interview.
Perhaps it wasn’t karma kicking him in the ass for being a twat while he was growing up and staying that way well into his twenties.
Maybe he got off on the pain.
He put Bernadette out of his head and was about to make a call when she showed at his door again ten minutes later.
“Goin’ out to get coffee, want one?” she asked.
“Got a meet with Hawk in half an hour, I’ll be gone before you get back, so no,” he answered.
“Feel like springin’ for coffee for me and all the boys?” she pushed. “It’ll be a write off. Not to mention team building.”
He sighed and did what he did a lot with Bernadette because apparently he did get off on the pain.
“Hit petty cash.”
“Gotcha,” she muttered, grinning and swinging back out only to twirl around in the hall and catch his gaze again. “Oh, yeah, and that Ralphie guy said the painting is from some woman named Olivia Shade.”
Nick went still.