Chapter 37: The Renegade Billionaire: Chapter 37

“You know, I’ve never used a sewing machine before, but I’m pretty sure they have new ones that don’t require my foot to move the needle.”

“Look around, Braxton. They’re all in use. This is the only one available, but you’re doing great.” Madison doesn’t look up from the sign she’s painting. Originally that had been my job, until she realized I couldn’t paint a straight line and the lettering I was working on was better suited for a haunted house.

The Chug is packed full of people, all ribbing each other with good-natured competition. The atmosphere is light and fun even if everyone in the damn place does keep shooting worried expressions Madison’s way.

Once we finished the framework at the park, I thought we’d be done for the day, but these people are no joke. When ours was finished, we helped at the Chug, then the Huckabees booth before finishing the Firefly’s.

For a competition that’s so cutthroat with trash talk, the competitors were all quick to help their neighbor.

Then with hot cocoa—the widely acknowledged neutral beverage—in our hands, we all walked over to the Chug for the second part of the night. The outfits. Not our outfits, but outfits for our booths. I’ve truly never seen anything like it.

“Just finish what you can,” Madison says breathlessly. “We only have ten more minutes tonight before I have to lock up. We can’t start again until noon tomorrow.”

“Noon? Don’t people work?”

“Business owners take time off throughout this week to prep for the competition.” Madison holds a paintbrush in both hands as she explains. “Originally, it was a way for the business owners to relax and chat about how the holiday season went for everyone. But as time went on, the competition got a little…”

“Intense,” Blissy shouts from across the room.

“Yeah, intense.” Madison agrees, then starts painting again. “We had to put some rules in place a few years ago so everyone had a fair chance.”

“So, it’s cutthroat but fair?” I ask.

“Yup.” She doesn’t look up this time. “Hurry. Five more minutes.”

The threats from my father haven’t left my mind, but being here with her and all these people helps me internalize it without losing my fucking shit.

I don’t want to worry Madison more than necessary, but my father has never made an empty threat. He’s planning something, and it’s up to me to figure out what before he can implement it.

“Time,” Marty calls out, and everyone calmly puts down their work.

“Great job everyone.” Madison rises from the floor, looking around at everyone’s handiwork. “I’ll lock this place up, and we’ll be ready to go again at noon tomorrow. No one, not even me, will be allowed back in here before then, so make sure you take all your personal belongings with you.”

The excitement of the event is only dimmed by exhaustion. People’s cheeks are rosy, expressions filled with happiness while ideas are shared as we all file outside.

“Ready, Chief?” Madison asks Pops’ old friend.

“Ready. Got me a new one this year too.” He jingles a heavy chain, and when I peer down at Madison, I see she has one too.

She laughs when she finds me staring at her. “We chain the doors with two different padlocks, so everyone knows that no one entered before they’re supposed to.”

“That’s right,” Chief says, adding his lock to the chain she just wrapped around the door handles. “Had a problem a few years ago with an accountant we won’t name, Jonah, but since then, Mads here has taken extra precautions, and we all appreciate her for it.”

I’m starting to understand that Madison is much more than the town sweetheart, she’s the pulse of the town.

“All set, folks.” She tugs on the chains, and when nothing happens, people disperse to their cars. “Ready?”

The way she stares at me—as if I hold the key to all her happiness—incites feelings so intense I’m not sure my body is strong enough to contain them. She’s honest, and loyal, and she’s all mine.

“Ready.”

“How much longer until the inn is done?” she asks as we climb into the truck. She still sits in the middle, and it makes me love this truck even more.

“They made some good progress on the second floor today. The general contractor said they should be done in about a month, but if we want to move back in, we can when they finish the second floor next week. Moose said we can stay at his rental for as long as we need to though.”

“That’s what’s the most shocking,” she says, laying her head on my shoulder. “Moose never rents that place to anyone. I don’t know how you sweet-talked him into it, but you must be much smoother than I gave you credit for.”

“Why doesn’t he rent it?”

Madison shrugs and nuzzles into my side. “He built it for him and his wife, but she passed away before he was finished. He doesn’t want to live there without her, so he only stays there when his kids and grandkids come to visit.”

“That’s really sad. I had no idea.”

“We all thought he’d sell it, but he goes up there to putter around sometimes. He says it makes him feel close to Lilly.”

I turn left onto the home’s long driveway, and dread settles heavily in my stomach when we pull up to the house and all the lights are on.

Madison doesn’t say anything as I put the truck in park, or when we walk up the steps, or even when we enter the home and find Grey has commandeered the great room with Pops and Sage each working at his side.

The scents of Christmas linger in the air. The joy that pine trees and cinnamon evoke are at complete odds with the concern on everyone’s faces.

“What’s going on?” I hesitantly ask, taking Madison’s coat and hanging it on the hook.

Sage comes at me with a large cotton swab. “Open,” he says while jabbing it at my mouth.

I have no reason to argue, so I open, and he swishes it all around both cheeks.

When he’s finished, he tucks it into a little tube and returns to the table.

“Anyone want to tell me what the hell that was about?”

“Tell him,” Grey says, tossing his pen onto the table. He always has one behind his ear when he’s nervous, and he plucks that one and chucks it to the table too. I’m guessing his lucky coin will make an appearance any moment now.

“Tell me what?” I search all their faces. It’s Pops who appears the most uneasy, so I focus on him.

“Pops, what did you do?” Madison takes the seat next to him.

I’m too on edge to sit, so I stand across from them, waiting for someone to start talking.

“Well,” Pops says, ringing his hands together in his lap. “He wasn’t sure. And he wanted you boys to decide.”

“Decide what?” It’s difficult to remain calm when every hair on my body is standing on end and my stomach has that freefall sensation you get when bad news is coming your way.

“It’s not bad, exactly,” Sage says, staring at a point over my head. If they told him, it can’t be too bad, so I start to relax.

“Ace thought that maybe you and Grey were related.” Pops speaks so fast, it takes me a moment to register his words.

“Related.” I drag out the word as though I don’t quite understand its meaning. “Related how?”

It takes him a moment, but when Pops lifts his gaze to mine, I already know.

“He thinks something may have happened between your mother and Grey’s father. That’s why they named you Reyes and not Montgomery. I think he was going to tell you all of this in the will but, well…you haven’t read it yet.”

“And you’ve known this the entire time we’ve been here?”

“It wasn’t my story to tell,” Pops argues.

“Pops. You should have said something,” Madison says gently.

“I called Mr. Coop,” Grey says, interrupting my spiraling thoughts. “He confirmed that there is a letter for the both of us, but he isn’t at liberty to say anything until we’ve met all the stipulations Ace set.”

My legs turn to Jell-O, so I finally take a seat across from them.

“Then I called your mother.” Grey’s tone gives nothing away, but the tightness in his jaw and the way he works his coin through his fingers speaks louder than words.

“What did she say?” I’m not sure my lungs are working properly. My head is a little woozy, and the tension in my neck begins to ache.

“Nothing. I asked her how well she knew my father, and she went silent. Then she told me he was a horrible man and hung up.”

“The swab?”

“A DNA test. Uncle Grey and I both took one. Wouldn’t it be tight if you were actually my uncle?” Sage is taking this news in a vastly different direction than I am.

“I am your uncle, Sage. Fucking DNA doesn’t change that.”

He frowns. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean⁠—”

Guilt slaps me in the face. “No, I’m sorry,” I say. “But I also mean it. I’m your uncle, regardless of what a Q-tip says.” I scrub both hands over my face, using the pressure to center myself. “Ace thought we might be related, but wanted us to decide for ourselves because…”

“Because maybe it opens a can of worms you can’t undo,” Pops says.

“There are a lot of scenarios here,” Grey agrees. “If we’re brothers, our parents could’ve had an affair. Or…” He swallows hard, the alternative too shitty to even say out loud.

“Or it was just a hunch that Ace had that turns out to be false, and my father hated me for reasons we’ll never understand. Let’s pretend, for the sake of covering all our bases, that our parents did have an affair. It makes sense that they’d want to keep that quiet.”

“My father was so caught up on image he allowed it to take my sister from me, so yeah, I believe he would’ve done anything possible to keep it out of the press.” Grey grows agitated and stands so he can pace. “But Alistair has nothing to lose now. Why wouldn’t he have already leaked it if it were true?”

Madison reaches across the table with her palm facing up. I place my hand in hers and squeeze, thankful for the contact.

“Okay,” I say slowly, gathering my thoughts as I go. “Your father would’ve done anything, and mine, well, we know he’d do anything for money. But how far would he go? If he’s not my father, and knew it, why would he sign the birth certificate? He had everything he ever wanted. He married into money. He had full control of Montgomery Media, at least until he crossed that final line.”

“He did.” Grey scratches his head, then meets my gaze. “But what if he took money for something that wasn’t exactly legal, or to cover up something?”

Do we look alike? Our coloring is different, but the rest of our features could definitely pass as a relation.

“Wait.” I rub at my temples as a memory fights its way to the surface. “Didn’t Ace say he didn’t give Alistair any funding for the Whisperloop after the initial start-up money because he thought gossip columns were trashy?”

He nods as the pieces fall into place in my mind.

“Yeah.” Grey’s already rushing to his computer. “And that start-up money would’ve only carried him so far.”

“Do we have access to the financial records for Montgomery Media from thirty years ago?”

“It’ll take some digging, but if it’s there, I’ll find it.”

“Find what?” Madison asks.

Grey lifts his face from the computer screen, and the second we connect, I know it’s true.

“We’re searching for evidence that Alistair took a big payout from Darren Wells before or shortly after I was born,” I say. “And if there was a payout, there would be some kind of contract or paper trail.”

“That would explain why he hates you so much,” Sage mutters.

“It would,” I agree while searching my memory for any clues that make this true. It’s all there—the disdain from Alistair, the indifference from my mother. I don’t even resemble my siblings, I look…like a dark-haired version of Grey.

“Let’s say this is all true. What would he do with this information now?” Madison asks.

“Revenge,” Grey and I say in unison.

“He has nothing to lose,” I say gently. “Grey’s father is in prison, and Alistair’s already turned on my mother and siblings in a bid to save himself.”

“And this would…” Grey pauses mid-sentence, and when he turns to Madison, I see concern in his features—he cares about her because I care about her. “This would kick up a media frenzy we haven’t seen in years. A scandal between the Wells and Reyes/Montgomery families would be front-page news, and not only on Alistair’s Whisperloop site. This kind of scandal would make every late-night talk show, every morning news broadcast. It would be everywhere.”

“But…why?” Her voice cracks, and I stand to take the chair next to her.

“If my father invested in Whisperloop so that Alistair would falsify the birth certificate and raise Brax as his own, that sounds an awful lot like selling a baby, and⁠—”

“That’s illegal and unethical,” she mutters.

“Right.” Grey’s fingers fly over his keyboard. “And Alistair is too arrogant to think we’d ever find proof. He’s so sure of himself, he’d do it just to ruin Omni-Reyes.”

I snap my attention to Grey, and when the room remains silent, he lifts his head.

“Customer satisfaction is down.” He rolls his coin through his fingers at a pace I’ve never seen. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to worry. But Ace was the face of honest, reliable news—people trusted him. With the story Alistair put out about you running from responsibility, and me being born a Wells, we’re losing customers on every platform. The Reyes name has always been associated with good, while Wells is quite literally equated with the devil. If this got out, it’s a hit our reputation might not recover from.”

A hit to the head with a baseball bat would hurt less than this. Could Alistair really ruin everything my family has built with lies?

“So how do you stop him?” Madison is wringing her hands in her lap.

Grey meets my gaze over her head. We know the truth, and we can’t keep it from her—it will only make it worse when the inevitable happens.

I hold her hand with both of mine and spin her in her chair, so I bracket her thighs with my own.

“We don’t, Madison. We can’t. We have to get ahead of the story, it’s how these things work.”

“You’re going to do what, exactly? Tell the world that you might be siblings? Won’t that result in the same outcome?” Her fear is etched into every syllable, and each one cuts me to my core.

“It will. I’m sorry. If there were any other way…”

“We’ll be ready for it though,” Grey says. “It won’t be an attack on you like it was before. We’ll hire security, and we’ll do everything we can to mitigate the damage.”

“He said five days, Braxton. Five days is the festival. Is he going to do something to the festival?”

I can’t answer that because I don’t know.

“We’ll have to get ahead of it before then, Madi. We won’t let him ruin your festival.” Grey’s fingers fly over his keyboard.

“It’s not my festival, Greyson Reyes.” Madison stomps her foot under the table. “It’s ours. All of ours. That means you too. You have to stop separating yourself from the people who love you.”

“Yeah, Uncle Grey.” Sage smirks but has the good sense to jump out of Grey’s reach.

“Fine. It’s our festival. We take care of what’s ours, Madi. But it isn’t going to be easy. I meant what I said. This will be a shit show.”

My girl squares her shoulders, looks him dead in the eyes, and says, “What can I do to help?”

“It depends,” Grey says, and I already know where he’s going with this. “How good of an actress are you?”

She spins back to me so fast her hair whips the side of my head.

“Actress?” She tilts her head adorably. “I mean, I did play the old oak tree when I was in the first grade.”

So fucking sweet.

“You’ll have to do better than that, sunshine. We have to make the entire town believe us.”

“Believe what?” Her gaze jumps from me to Grey.

“That you’ve broken up,” Grey says. “Because if this deposit for twenty million dollars is what I think it is, Braxton and I are half-brothers.”