Mr. Corporate (Mister #3) (29 page)

Pax is arranging furniture. Or, I should say,
re
arranging furniture. I’ve been to this house of Nolan’s before. Not a lot, but we were only a couple hours apart before he took on that project in the desert, so I came down every once in a while. Del Mar is not halfway between my house and his, not at all. But when you’re driving down the 5 freeway in bumper-to-bumper traffic on a Friday night, you’re grateful you don’t have to make that last trek into downtown.

So we met here.

This house is like a tribute to sleek modern design. And I know that Pax used to own it, that he sold it to Nolan, and then asked him not to sell it without asking him first—he’s always had that entitlement mentality—and Pax made him pay cash.

I know this because Pax came to me the same day the house finally closed and he got his money. He came to me because he needed more.

I gave him that five million, plus another million a few days later. He caught me when I was flush with money and feeling magnanimous.

“What are you doing?” I ask Pax as I look at Five and Oliver having a quiet conversation out on the terrace. Pax ignores me.

Five. Yesterday on the boat he looked like a guy who’s just about done riding waves and just about to realize he’s got nothing to show for all those years he spent on the sand but an old float plane.

Today he looks like a secret agent.

All four of us are wearing dark suits. It’s like a uniform. We are all wearing black ties. I wasn’t given a choice. My suit was provided for me. But Five is different than us Misters. He’s got black sunglasses on as he gazes out over the terrace to the ocean. The horses aren’t running at the moment, so there is no one down on the Del Mar Racetrack, which this mini-mansion overlooks.

It’s not the sunglasses though. Or the dark suit. Or the way he went from frumpy to manscaped in less than twenty-four hours. It’s
everything
about him. The way he talks—or doesn’t talk, I should say. The way he listens, I guess. That detached expression he’s always wearing. It’s the confidence he has. Like he knows things. It’s the money, too. Obviously, he’s got plenty of it.

But we’ve all got money. And even though Pax has been borrowing like crazy over the years, I know he’s good for it because I know he’s fucking loaded up to the neck in real estate.

“What’s their deal?” I ask Pax, nodding my head out to Oliver and Five on the terrace.

“We’re gonna find out soon,” Pax says, pushing a chair into position. Then he smiles, looking down at his arrangement like his job here is complete, and puts two fingers on his tongue and whistles sharply to get everyone’s attention.

I look over at Tori to see how she’s taking this.

She looks bored. So I shoot her a smile and she smiles back.

“OK,” Pax says, rubbing his hands together when Oliver and Five come back inside. “This is what I call the Jesus Circle. Miss Arias,” he says, stopping to stare at her across the room. She’s sitting at the bar, sipping some water that she helped herself to. “Join us.”

Tori glances at me. I shrug. She gets up, bringing her water with her, and stands by my side.

We are a team, that positioning says.

If Pax, and Oliver, and Five are a team, well, we can be a team too.

There are two sides in this room.

Us and them.

“The Come-to-Jesus Circle, actually,” Pax clarifies. “And,” he says, looking at all of us and then the furniture, “there are assigned seats, I’m afraid. But don’t worry, Miss Arias.” He gives Tori a wink. “I have you next to your BFF.” He points to the first chair on his left. “Five,” he says, “you sit here.”

Five walks over to a big plush chair and sits down, casually kicking back, one ankle placed easily on the opposite knee like he’s settling in for something long and boring.

“Then you, Corporate. And you, Miss Arias.”

We are sentenced to sit on the couch, to Five’s left.

“And you, Match. Right there.” He sits in the chair directly opposite Five.

“I’m taking this one,” Pax says, turning a dining room chair around so he can cop a squat on it, facing backwards, and prop his hands on the seat back.

“You want to tell us what the fuck is going on?” I ask, unperturbed.

“Don’t be so antsy, Corporate. These things take time.”

“You’ve got ten minutes. Then we’re leaving.”

Pax nods at me, a gesture that someone less familiar with him might mistake as backing down. But I know better.

“OK,” he says. “I’ll get this show on the road. I’m the one who set you two up with that whole Wallace Arlington job.”

“There’s no job?” Tori asks, her words a combination of annoyance and regret. “So you wasted our time and almost got us killed? For what reason?”

“Miss Arias,” Pax says, slowly turning his head to look at her. “I’m in the hot seat right now. That means I talk and you listen.”

“Fuck you,” she says. Doesn’t yell it or even say it with contempt. She states it.
Fuck him
.

I raise my eyebrows and smile at Pax when he looks back to me. “As I was saying before I was interrupted. My come-to-Jesus moment with you, Corporate, is that I set you up to be on that island.” He smiles, then adds, “To get you killed.”

“Excuse me?”

“Tori,” I say, looking down at her. I take her hand and give it a squeeze. “Let him finish.”

“But,” Pax says, ignoring Tori’s outburst, “you’re not an easy guy to kill, are you, Corporate?”

“What would be the fun in that?” I ask, looking at Oliver. “You’re in this too? You guys set me up?”

“Take your own advice,” Oliver says. “And let him finish.”

Tori’s leg starts bouncing, like she’s getting pissed off.

“Go ahead,” I say, looking back to Pax. “Finish then.”

“I got a call about a month ago. Just before all that shit with Romantic happened. It was your friend Liam Henry.”

“Go on,” I say.

“He said you were becoming a problem for him. He said Perfect’s little altercation with Allen was also a problem. He said there better not be any more problems.”

“You work for him?” I ask.

“Have. In the past. Strictly free agent stuff, you know. Contracts and shit. His son had a run-in with an ex-girlfriend a few years ago and I took care of it for him. Couple other small things. But when Romantic had that issue, well, Liam got nervous.”

“Why?” I ask, trying to fit the pieces together.

“He never said. But I can read between the lines, West. And I’ve been putting the pieces together for a while now.”

“So tell us,” Tori snaps.

I place my hand on her leg and say, “Quiet.” She has no idea what’s happening. But I’m starting to understand. “Go on.”

“I think I’m gonna hand the talking stick over to Five now. And we’ll just let it all sort itself out in the circle.”

I let out a deep breath and look at Five.

He says, “I’m gonna pass for now. I think I’ll go last.”

I look at Pax again and he smiles, “So you’re up, Corporate. And start from the beginning.”

“Maybe I’ll pass too,” I say, buying a few seconds to collect my thoughts.

“Sorry,” Pax says. “No can do. But I’ll help you out, if you need it. When you were seven years old your drunken asshole of a father found something interesting, didn’t he?”

I look over at Tori, then catch myself and look back to Pax. I lied to her about this. I told her I was fourteen.

“Don’t look at her, Corporate. She’s not gonna help you out with this one. And you’re not gonna send her out of the room to save face. So man up, asshole. It’s time to man up.”

“I already know,” Tori says. “He told me the other night while we were on the island.”

“Tori—” I say.

“Did he now?” Pax interrupts. “Somehow I doubt that. Oh”—Pax laughs—“I’m sure he told you
something
, Miss Arias. But whatever it was, it was a lie.” Pax looks me dead in the eyes and says, “Everything he’s ever told us has been a lie. Isn’t that right, West?”

“West?” Tori asks. “What’s going on?”

I stay silent, but Oliver is there to fill the space. “We know, West. So just come clean. We know what you did.”

They cannot possibly know. They can’t. I’ve never told anyone.

“We have our ways of finding things out,” Oliver says. And when I glance over at him, he’s nodding to Five.

I look over at Five too. He shrugs and says, “That’s why I passed. I already know everything about you, Mr. Conrad. And we just need you to come clean so we can clear the air and fix this shit.”

“Fix it?” I ask. “Fix what?”

“The reason why people are coming after us is you, West.” Pax says it. “We know it’s you.”

“Wait,” Tori says. “Just… wait. I have something to say too. Before this goes any further.”

But Oliver puts up a hand and says, “You’ll get your turn next, Miss Arias. But his story has to come first.”

I thought about it. I thought about all the ways I could be caught and this was never even up in the top hundred. Cornered by my own friends. My girlfriend in the room, listening to all of it. All the lies, all the plots, all the planning, all the betrayals.

But I feel a huge sense of relief too. It’s time, I think. These guys are right. I’ve been running since that night I met Victoria out in front of the administration building.

I was on the verge of getting busted.

And then I wasn’t.

I thought it was weird then and I think it’s weird now. But they’re wrong if they think this is my fault. I didn’t start this shit. I had nothing to do with that girl who accused us of rape. I didn’t even know her.

So fuck Mysterious, and Match, and their friend, Five.

Just fuck them.

I’m tired of running anyway. I’m tired of feeling guilty for putting myself first.

I’m tired of all this shit.

Fuck them.

I open my mouth and start talking.

*******

When I was six things were bad. My father was a drunk, my mother was sick, the house we lived in was nothing but a shack. The school I went to was small but everyone knew who I was.

The poor kid.

But also the smart kid. The tough kid. The fighter, the troublemaker, the liar, the cheat, the thief.

My father was also a gambler. And even though the house we lived in was worthless, the land wasn’t. We were land-rich. And every time a real estate developer came knocking because they wanted to buy the land around us and put up more luxury mansions, he’d ask for some outrageous number.

Fifty million. Hundred million. Prices just so astronomical, the developers took it as a joke.

He
wasn’t
joking. He knew what we had. Five hundred acres of prime, undeveloped land on an island that has very definite boundaries. These developers saw dollar signs. Lots and lots of dollar signs.

But undeveloped, it was nowhere near worth the price my father was asking. “They’ll give in eventually,” he used to say. “They’ll have to. Only one place on earth that looks like this, West,” he’d say. “And I own it.”

His grand plan started to fall apart during a Saturday night poker game about a year and a half later.

We were on a yacht, we were in international waters, and he was drunk as I’ve ever seen him.

I realized later that it was a setup. But I was only seven back then, so how could I know? I was clever, but not wise. It went right over my head.

By this time my mother was already dead. And my father really
was
thinking of selling the land. And I had just finished my first season of illegal lobster trapping, which is how I knew about the cave.

My father lost our land in that game. But just as the rowdy group started to celebrate his loss and their gain, I spoke up.

“I have something worth a lot more than that land,” I said.

No one heard me. No one paid me any attention. No one stopped drinking, or laughing, or celebrating.

My father had walked out, minutes before, calling for me to follow him or he’d leave me here with the bastards who’d just cheated me out of my inheritance.

I didn’t really know what that meant. I just knew that the land was mine too. And I had just lost it.

My father did leave me behind. He never called for me again. Just had the crew shuttle him over to his boat and drop him off.

By the time I thought to go looking, the boat was gone.

But I didn’t need him by then, anyway.

I had struck a new deal.

*******

“You found that treasure?” Tori asks.

I look over at Pax and wait for the laugh.

But he doesn’t laugh. Which means he really might know what comes next.

“I found the underwater cave while I was setting lobster traps that summer. And I found the first gold coin about two weeks into my little business adventure. I kept one in my pocket. I never showed it to anyone, I was smarter than that. But I kept it in there. No one was going to rob a dirty little kid. But that night on the boat I flicked it on the table while the men played. And I said, ‘Give me back my land and I’ll show you where you can find the rest.’”