From Sanctum With Love (Masters and Mercenaries Book 10) (42 page)

But he had his brother. For the first time in forever, Kai was going to make sure that Jared had his brother.

“Thank you for getting me out of there.” He held his hand out to Harrison, who shook it.

“The pleasure is mine,” he said with a smile that reminded Kai of a hungry tiger. “I look forward to taking this one on. Jared, you understand the terms of your release?”

Jared stopped, briefly looking Harrison’s way. “I do. I won’t leave the city. I’ll check in with…who am I checking in with?”

“His name is Simon Weston. He’s going to be the McKay-Taggart contact,” Harrison explained. “He and his partner are already on the case. They’ll want to talk to you in the morning. Hey, you can watch them work and maybe get some research out of it while they clear you.”

“I won’t need it. The production company will fire me in the morning. I’ll be lucky to come out of this with my TV job intact,” he stated flatly. “They’ll likely fire me, too. Or the network will cancel the show and everyone will be out of work.”

“You didn’t do this,” Harrison replied. “If they fire you, we’ll sue them.”

Jared shook his head. “Doesn’t work that way in Hollywood. Oh, we can sue and they’ll pass me some cash, but my career is over. I’ll always be a killer to some people no matter what the outcome is. The cloud will never go away. I’m going to catch a cab and find a hotel. Mr. Keen, if you could send me a bill for your services tonight, I’ll pay it. I’ll find my own lawyer tomorrow.”

Jared pulled his phone out of his pocket and started walking toward the front of the station.

Kai turned to Harrison. “He doesn’t know what he’s saying. We need you on this case.”

Harrison shook his head. “Explain to him that he needs to talk to Big Tag. Until Big Tag fires me, I’m not off the case. That is one Dom I’m not about to piss off. Night all. I’ll be in contact in the morning.”

“Fuck,” Case said with a frown. “They can’t fire him. Can they?”

Kai was already moving, following his brother. “I’m sure they can. Go on ahead of us. I’ll get my brother home.”

“No can do,” Case shot back. “I promised Ian I would see you home safely. He put up the million for Jared’s bond.”

Shit. Although it made sense because how the hell had Jared been expected to do it in the middle of the night with no one helping him. “I’ll make sure Ian gets his money back.”

“He’s not worried about that, damn it. He’s worried about you. He’s worried about you and your brother. Sean brought my truck up here so I’ll pull it around and I’ll wait for you in the front. Talk to Jared and then you need to get your girl because she was pissed and right now she’s at Erin’s. I can only imagine how that’s going to go for you. Erin could be teaching her how to take your balls off.”

He didn’t have time to worry about that right now. One massive cluster fuck at a time. It’s what his life had become. He needed to deal with his brother first and then he would figure out how screwed he was with Kori.

Kori, his sweet girl with so many walls he’d only barely managed to climb the first couple. She was likely erecting more. Higher walls. Stronger walls. These walls would be fortified against him.

Did he even deserve a second chance with her? He stalked out of the station and saw his brother staring down at his phone.

He’d walked away and left Jared alone. What would Ian have done if he’d found Sean with a woman Ian thought he’d loved? Would he have walked away and never spoken to his brother again? Or would he have beaten the shit out of Sean, dumped the girl, and started over again?

Because they were family.

For so long family had seemed like a cross to be borne, like a stone dragging him down. He couldn’t look at his brother without seeing their mother in her hospice bed, wasting away. There’d been nothing to do. No magic tricks, no amount of discipline and work had made her better. Tired. He’d been so fucking tired. Tired of poverty. Tired of worry. Tired of the feeling in his gut that he was useless. He’d walked away the first chance he’d gotten and he hadn’t looked back.

“Jared?”

“I’m not leaving town,” Jared said, his voice tight. “I know your friend put up the cash for my bail. I’ll have it back to him in the morning. I’m going to a hotel. I won’t leave until my new lawyer says I can. You’re safe. Your friends are safe, so you can leave me the fuck alone.”

What had happened? “I don’t think I deserve that. I’m trying to help you.”

Jared turned, his eyes staring right into Kai’s. “Are you? Or are you helping the FBI?”

He was going to kill Ethan Rush. “Jared, I have never once believed you did this.”

“Five women. Five women I liked. Five women I spent time with and talked to and thought they used me. They hadn’t. They couldn’t fucking call because they were dead. Someone’s killing the women around me and you didn’t bother to mention that you were a part of an investigation into me. I thought you were finally ready to talk. I thought, wow, after all this time Kai’s going to show me the ropes. He’s willing to be part of my life in some way. I should have known the only way you would ever let me back in was for some revenge.”

“This isn’t about revenge, Jared. Goddamn it, you’re never going to believe me, but I was going to tell you about the investigation tomorrow. Today. I don’t know. I was going to lay it all out for you, but I owed some people first.”

“Of course. Everyone comes before me,” Jared agreed sullenly.

“Don’t pull that shit on me. I spent my whole childhood putting you first.”

“And didn’t I know it?” Jared shot back. “Do you think I didn’t hear you tell your friends how much a burden I was, how you wished I didn’t exist half the time?”

“I didn’t mean it. Or maybe I did, but I was a kid, Jared. I was a child trying to fill an adult role. I also loved you. Maybe I didn’t show it enough, but I loved you. You were my brother. I’m sorry for what happened that day with Hannah. I can see now that you were acting out, trying to get my attention, and the truth of the matter is you deserved my attention. After Mom died, I shut down. I left you with Aunt Glenna and I shouldn’t have. I should have found another way to make money.”

Jared’s eyes narrowed, the first hint of dark emotion he could remember seeing in his brother. “Yes, you left me with Aunt Glenna. Such a lovely woman. Did you know she pimped me out to her friends? She took all the money and the only way I could stay in the house was if I entertained her friends. It was subtle at first. Just talk to them for a while. No big deal. And then one of them made a move on me. I turned her down. Our sweet aunt explained that if I didn’t fuck her friend she would kick me out.”

Kai felt like his whole world flipped over. “What?”

“She turned me into a whore,” Jared enunciated. “She did it to move up in her world. She said she was an event planner, but what she actually did was provide escort services for some of the wealthiest women on the West Coast. When she realized what a gold mine I was, she wasn’t about to let go.”

“What?” Kai could remember coming home and screaming at Jared for wasting money on designer clothes and all the shit he had in his room. Now it made sense. His brother didn’t care about suits. He preferred jeans and T-shirts. “Why wouldn’t you tell me?”

“I was ashamed. Why wouldn’t I tell you? Let’s see. Why wouldn’t I tell my high and mighty judgmental brother that I was stupid enough to get caught in a trap? I didn’t even realize what was happening. Why wouldn’t I tell you I was a whore? Because I knew what would happen. You would walk away from me. It still fucking happened.”

“Was Hannah a client?”

Jared laughed, but there was no humor at all in the sound. “No. Hannah was a drunken mistake. I met her at a bar. I wanted to obliterate myself. I wanted to get so fucking numb I couldn’t feel anything. And Hannah walked in and we started talking about you. That was the good part. The bad part was waking up and realizing what I’d done. The whole night was a blur but I did it. I know I did it. I can remember thinking I wanted a couple of moments that were mine. I wanted a woman who knew me, who wanted me and not some image she had in her head of me. How foolish do you think I felt the next morning? When I woke up and realized it had all been about you and I’d finally done something worse than selling myself for a roof over my head?”

“Jared, I had no idea.” Because he hadn’t bothered to truly know his brother. Because he’d been like everyone else in Jared’s life. He’d seen the handsome exterior and fooled himself into thinking there wasn’t anything else there. He hadn’t wanted anything else to be there. After watching his mother die, he’d wanted to not care. He’d managed for years and years.

Jared turned, staring out into the night. “It doesn’t matter now. I left the day after you did. I packed a bag and walked out and I slept on the streets for a month or so before I got my first contract. Squirrel went with me. Only person in the fucking world who ever cared about me.”

“Jared, I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry I didn’t see it. I didn’t see what was happening to you, and I damn straight didn’t look closely enough at what was happening to me. I distanced. I retreated after Mom died.” It was so easy to see what he’d done now.

“She died on me, too. She died on me and when I turned around to the only family I had left, you were gone.”

“I know. I did that,” Kai agreed. “I’ve been doing it ever since. I’m the asshole in this play, Jared. I find it easier to care about strangers than my own brother because their problems are intellectual. I don’t have to feel them. I don’t have to care. I don’t have to wonder if they’re going to walk out on me. If they’re going to die on me.”

Jared shook his head. “The work you do is good. Don’t sell that short. You’re successful.”

“Successful? I’m only here because Big Tag believes in my work. Hell, I can barely afford the building I’m in. I had to take a loan out. A couple of months ago I had an anonymous donor give us enough to keep going for a while, but if I don’t keep finding ways to fund the practice, I’m going to lose it all.”

“You won’t.” Jared cursed as though remembering something bad he’d forgotten. “Fuck, or maybe you will now.”

There was something in the way Jared said it that made Kai wonder. “I rely on several charity groups for funding.”

“No. I’ve been funding you since the explosion at Sanctum.”

Why did that suddenly not surprise him? He didn’t have to ask why his brother hadn’t told him. He knew. Jared had been afraid Kai would have turned the money down if he’d known where it came from. And he might have. He wouldn’t now. He couldn’t. “Then I need to thank you for that. I need to thank you and I need to apologize.”

 Jared’s head shook again. “No. Not so fast. Not until you’ve heard everything. Let me lay it all out for you, brother. I’ve been lying. I’ve been in the lifestyle for years. After what happened at home, my first agent took me and Squirrel in. She let us stay in her guesthouse and after a few months, she invited me to go to her club. At first I thought, well, you know what I thought.”

He’d thought he was going to have to work for his room and board all over again. “That’s not the way our world works. She’d seen you needed the training, hadn’t she?”

“I was lost. I was so fucking out of control but I couldn’t admit it.”

When he thought about it, he could see what his mind had hidden. “You were never out of control. You might have felt that way, but even at a young age, you were in control. You never got angry. Mom talked about it. One year all you got for Christmas was a couple of used toys and you sat there and I thought you would throw a fit, but you got up and hugged her and thanked Santa Claus.”

Jared leaned against the railing, his shoulders slumping as though tired of carrying so much weight. “I knew there wasn’t a Santa, but she liked to pretend.”

Now that he looked past his own issues it was easy to see that there were a hundred times when Jared could have lost control. “She cried that night. She told me it would have been easier if you’d thrown a fit. If you acted like a brat she could have held it together.”

“She told you all that? I shouldn’t be surprised. You were her partner. After Dad left, she turned to you. That wasn’t fair.”

Something lifted deep inside him, some stupid piece of him that needed acknowledgement. Some selfish piece left over from childhood. He hadn’t realized it, but there had been some small part of him that required that Jared know what he’d sacrificed. The minute he had what he needed, he realized the truth. “Life wasn’t fair to any of us. I’m so sorry. I should have stayed. I should have kicked your ass and sat down and figured out what was going on because my brother wouldn’t have done that to me if he’d been in his right mind.”

It seemed to Kai that there was an awful lot about his brother that Jared had hidden. Had he hidden those things because he’d been ashamed? Because he’d been desperate for Kai to accept him?

“I never once in all of this believed that you could have hurt those women. Not for one second. I kept it from you because there’s more at stake than you and me and I have to beg you to understand that I can’t talk about it. Not because I don’t trust you, but because I made a promise. I’m going to make another one. I’m going to stop being an arrogant, unforgiving asshole and start being your big brother. So listen up. You will get in that truck with me and Case and you’ll go home with me. You will accept Harrison as your lawyer and you and I are going to fight this with everything we have. You will not give up. Not on yourself and not on the career you’ve built. They can’t hold us down. Not if we go into this together.”

He’d been so stupid. He’d been foolish and hurt and selfish and he’d wasted so much damn time. He’d wasted time with Jared and he’d wasted time with Kori. He should have wrapped her up in his arms the minute he’d met her. He should have pulled her close and thanked god he’d finally found her.

He should have thanked god he hadn’t been alone anymore. He should have figured out that he’d never been alone. Not really.

He moved in and faced his brother. He was so fucking intellectual. It had been his refuge, a way for him to rise above the misery he’d been born into, but now he could see it had been a wall, too. His childhood hadn’t been all misery. It had simply been easier to see it that way because losing his mother had been so painful. He’d lumped Jared in with that loss and walked away. He’d held everyone off until one little brat had wormed her way into his soul, and now he couldn’t hold back a second more. Kori was in his heart, and his heart suddenly seemed like such a massive, open thing, full and yet wanting more.