I reach the entrance to the restaurant and I don’t hesitate even a moment. I pull open the door and enter.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
SHANE
“Table for one?” a hostess asks at the same moment my gaze lands on a rounded booth in the back where my brother now sits with Adrian.
I step around the woman I’ve barely glanced at and make a beeline for my targets, neither looking up until I’m already sitting down with them. “I think it’s time we talk,” I say, noting that even in a UFC T-shirt, Adrian has this edge of arrogant money about him that reminds me of my father, who I’d once aspired to be, and perhaps resemble far more than I’d like.
“Holy fuck, Shane,” Derek growls. “What are you thinking?”
Adrian arches a brow. “I’d be curious to know the same, since I don’t typically take uninvited guests.”
“I assume my brother told you the FBI is at the BP facility.”
“He did,” Adrian confirms, “and since you’re understandably concerned, I’ll excuse your intrusion. This is uneventful. I told you. Your facilities are clear.”
“We are on their radar,” I say. “An insider told me the FBI is looking at sports players as users of a drug they’re calling Sub-Zero.”
“Because I call it Sub-Zero,” he says. “And they’ve been looking into it for a while. It doesn’t show up in tests.”
“We have a stockholder that’s in sports,” I say. “We hold a drug company in our portfolio. Don’t you think that makes us dangerously visible?”
“There’s a reason we left Mike Rogers out of this,” Adrian says, and I see the irritation flash in Derek’s face, as if his hand has been shown before the vote. And it has been. I was right about Mike. He’s too cautious, with too much to lose, to land in dangerous waters by choice. Adrian sips his whiskey. “He’s the perfect cover, don’t you think?”
“That’s nothing shy of insanity,” I say, treading cautiously so as to not get Mike killed. “He’s a magnet for attention just like BP is as a pharmaceutical company. Made worse by Derek’s careless actions.”
“Spoken by the brother afraid to ever take a damn risk,” Derek bites out.
I reach into my pocket and grab a sheet of paper, which I unfold and set in front of Adrian. “That’s my brother paying off a federal official to get drug approval. The FBI found out.”
Adrian inhales a slow, calculated breath and looks at Derek. “Is this true?”
“It was necessary,” my brother says, and what comes next is so fast, so unexpected, I don’t have time to prepare myself.
Adrian picks up a steak knife, and stabs it through my brother’s hand, all the way to the table.
Holy fuck.
Derek cries out in horrific pain and the brother in me wants to rescue him, but Adrian isn’t looking at him. He’s looking at me. “What the hell?” Derek demands. “Get it out! Shane, get it out!”
I don’t move, my gaze locked with Adrian’s cold, brutal stare, as he says, “Shut up,” to Derek, “or you will not like the results.”
I discreetly slide my knee to Derek’s, giving him a silent warning, and he sucks in a trembling breath, saying nothing else.
“Where were we?” Adrian asks, his hand leaving the knife, which he doesn’t even attempt to remove from my brother’s hand. “Oh yes, where Mike Rogers fits in. If our answer is that he doesn’t, let’s buy him out. Whatever the price, I’ll pay it.”
And there it is. Adrian is now exactly where he wants to be, setting himself up to own a piece of Brandon Enterprises. “I’m not selling you any part of my company.”
“Then I’ll go to him directly.”
“My father was never an overly honest man,” I say. “He got away with a lot of things, and recently I saw him in action, and was reminded that he is a king for a reason. Much like your father. Let’s not be the two dead brothers.”
He narrows his gaze on me. “You know about my brother.”
“And you now know about mine. This is going nowhere good. This will destroy us both.”
“We’ll take a three-month breather,” Adrian says. “We’ll let things cool off.”
“Three months is nothing to the FBI and don’t you think they will look at what prescriptions Brody was taking? That’s going to tie back to us.”
“He had a legitimate prescription.”
“So will others who end up dead.”
“No one has died,” he insists.
“Brody.”
“That was a car accident.”
“You and I both know that’s not true and this is death number two the FBI is looking into. Real drugs covering for illegal drugs have a trail you can’t avoid. In premise, this was a good idea, until you find out where it leads, and that’s to you, then your father.”
He considers me for several long seconds, his expression unreadable, while Derek’s heavy breathing fills the air. “You’ve become far more profitable to me than you know.”
I feel those words like a punch in the chest. “And far more of a liability than you know.”
“We’ll rotate drugs.”
“They still lead back to you and me.”
“We’ll find a way around it.”
“We won’t.”