Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 82767 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 414(@200wpm)___ 331(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82767 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 414(@200wpm)___ 331(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
When Drew was gone, my mom got up and went through to their kitchen. She had been watching me as we made plans and discussed how to proceed, and soon she reappeared and ordered us all into the kitchen. She had piled everything she could lay her hands on onto the kitchen table. There were different breads, cold cuts, a bowl of salad, three kinds of cheese, olives, chips, and various dips.
“When did you last eat?” she asked me.
“I couldn’t face eating, not with all of this going on…” I began to make excuses.
“Well, you are going to eat now,” she said. “And you, Keegan.”
“Really, Mrs. Hancock, I’m…” He was silenced by one look from my mother. Nobody turned down food in this house if she presented them with it.
“It’s Helen, and you haven’t eaten today either, I’ll bet, so sit down. You are eating too. Hancock was my maiden name; where did you get that from?” She looked puzzled.
We looked at one another and smiled, and she handed us plates as we sat down.
“It’s easier to just do as she says,” I shrugged, helping myself to food.
“Ah now, that is a Hancock thing!” my mom smiled, oblivious. “All the Hancock women are like that!”
Keegan laughed at this, and took some food, smiling at me as though it were only the two of us there.
Chapter 46
KEEGAN
I SUPPOSE THE most difficult thing about working out how to sabotage my brother’s plans wasn’t even trying to come up with a tactic. For me, the hardest thing was not knocking Drew out cold. He clearly wanted Freya. It was written all over him – the way he looked at her, the way he spoke to her, everything about him screamed that he was madly in love with her. I think she knew it, too. She had told me that they had ancient history, and I was relieved to find it had never come to anything, but the fact that I still felt a twinge of jealousy over him – the guy who had almost ruined her family – told me that my own feelings for her were probably stronger than I had admitted to myself.
Freya’s family were like her. They had welcomed me, fed me, listened to me, and reassured me, as though I hadn’t been a sworn enemy until just a few hours earlier. When I left their home to go back to my condo, kissing Freya on the doorstep as though we were teenagers, I felt my old loneliness seep back. I couldn’t go back to the lonely, angry life I had been living. Whatever happened the next day – which largely depended on whether Drew could carry out his part of the plan – I knew I was going forward as a different person than I had been, and I had to be grateful for that. It was like Freya had said; I couldn’t regret her.
I don’t think any of us slept well that night, and the next morning there was a sense of anticipation at Dynasty Games, a nervous energy among us. Drew went along to the offices as planned for his meeting with Sean, and told him that he would agree to everything he said. There was just one condition. He wouldn’t discuss it until the CEO was in the room. He wanted my father to hear his version of events. This was a gift to Sean, and he had called our father to join them. Apparently, an assistant brought them coffee and it was all very respectable. My dad had joined them and sat there silently listening to what Drew had to say. He told them word for word what the person from Clover House had asked of him, how he had felt threatened, how he was offered further work, and told about accounts being hacked.
I think I must have walked in just after he got to the part about ‘me’ asking him to falsify some accounts, because Sean had seized on this and exclaimed, “He wanted you to fix the accounts to cover his tracks!” His voice was full of fake outrage.
I had coughed at this as I entered, and they spun round to see me. Their expressions were priceless. I had pulled up a chair and sat down, smiling at them all.
“What else did I ask you to do?” I asked.
Drew stammered. “It wasn’t you.”
“Sorry?” I asked.
“It was him.” He looked up at Sean and then to our father.
Dad stood up and turned his back to us, saying steadily, “Thank you, Drew. I have heard enough, you can go.”
“Wait,” I said. “Drew, tell us about…”
“No,” my father said. “I have heard enough. I already know enough.”
“This is lies!” laughed Sean. “You don’t believe this, do you?”
Drew left, his eyes meeting mine for a second, and I nodded slightly. It was all the thanks he was going to get from me, but it meant a truce.