Dirty Little Lies: A Men of Summer Novel (7 page)

The Brigham Agency wasn’t bound by normal laws, just as the Kin weren’t. There were checks, balances, and there were traitors. Far more, it appeared, than they had ever imagined.

“I’ll leave…” Grace whispered.

“And go where?” he asked, turning to her, finding it harder to rein in his own fury than it had ever been. “Where will you go, Grace, that the agency or the Kin can’t find you? There were only a few of those low-level bastard traitors searching for Kenni, and she lost her uncle fighting to stay alive. How will you survive against the agency or the Kin they convince to go after you?”

She was so fucking pale, it made him want to slam his fist into a Brigham face.

Emerald eyes sparkled with tears as soft pink lips tightened to control their trembling and a sense of hopelessness flashed across her face. “But I didn’t do this.” The file shook in her hands as she lifted it for just a moment before letting it settle back to her lap.

He hadn’t seen that look on her face since she was five years old and standing beside her father’s grave. The vulnerability and uncertainty mixed with overwhelming grief and pain. It was bad enough knowing her mother had betrayed the family in general and was the reason for her father’s murder. But to realize the woman who should have nurtured her was instead so evil, she’d sacrifice her daughter as well was tearing her up inside. And there wasn’t a damned thing he could do to make the pain go away for her.

“I’m going to assume you have a solution?” Vinny snarled. “That’s why you’re here, right?”

“How can he have a solution?” The tears in her voice didn’t detract from the anger, the pain, or the confusion. “How can he help when it’s obvious you or the Kin can’t?” She turned to him then, shaking her head. “And how did you get this information? You hate the Kin and the Brighams, yet you were able to steal files from the estate?” Disbelief flickered in her gaze. “Really, Zack? Did you turn into a cat burglar overnight?”

The question came quicker than he’d anticipated. Grace was smart, though; he should have expected it.

“Did you verify this information, Uncle Vinny?” Desperation filled the question, the search for something, anything to change the situation apparent in her tone.

Turning back to Vinny, Zack let his gaze lock with the other man’s.

Vinny’s expression was heavy with knowledge of the sacrifice Zack was making. And it was a sacrifice. A lifetime of secrets, the attempts to deny who he was and where he came from were over.

“Uncle Vinny?” Grace whispered, the silence in the room becoming as heavy as the tension.

“I don’t have to verify it,” Vinny said quietly. “I know Zack was at the estate when you were attacked. He’s there every month, just as you are.”

Cord wiped his hand over his face before leaning forward in his chair, elbows on his knees, his hands hanging between them as he stared at the floor.

He’d always known the time for secrets was going to be over soon. It had been a damned good fight, and he’d managed to stay one step ahead of the Brigham family all his life.

He’d known the truth would eventually come out though.

“Why?” Grace whispered. “Why would the Brighams care about someone who so obviously hates them as much as Zack hates them? What does he have on them?”

Zack shook his head. “I don’t have anything on them, Grace. It’s what they know about me.”

He rubbed at the side of his jaw; the bombshell he was about to drop would be devastating for her. The rumors of the reasons behind her father’s and his parents’ deaths had circulated through the Kin for decades. Truth didn’t matter. The truth had never been told, the rumor always allowed to stand simply because it was less dangerous to the family and to the Kin.

“What they know about you?” she questioned him, anger rising in her tone. “How can you help me if they have something they’re holding over you? What kind of game are you playing?”

“They’re not holding anything over me,” he gritted out, forcing his fingers not to curl into fists.

“Then explain it, Richards!” Deacon snapped as he and his twin glared at him murderously. “Do you think we’re just going to let you waltz out of here with Grace, without giving her a damned good expectation of your ability to protect her?”

“Enough, Deacon.” Cord shook his head as Vinny grimaced at the question, his gaze still locked on Zack.

“Enough? Let him fucking explain himself to her.” Sawyer came out of his chair to stand next to Grace. “He’s full of shit.”

Zack’s lips quirked. He had to give it to the twins—they were just as explosive as Cord was dangerously quiet.

“Ever known me to lie to you, Sawyer?” Zack asked him, turning in his chair just enough to watch Grace’s face as he spoke. “Have I ever lied to you, Grace?” he asked her softly.

She licked her lips, the lower curve trembling again before she managed to restrain it. “It doesn’t make sense, Zack.” She swallowed tightly. “There’s nothing you can do.…”

“I’m the only one who can keep you alive,” he assured her. “I promise you that.”

“It takes more than a promise, Zack,” Deacon snarled.

“Alex Brigham will never let an agent or a Kin under this family’s control touch you once he believes you belong to me,” he stated, hardening his tone, hardening the compassion and anger inside him. “He’d die and go to hell before he’d touch you, because he knows if he does, and I ever learn he’s behind it, then I’ll snap my mother’s inheritance up so fast, it will make his head spin. And if anything happens to me, then he loses control of it to the heirs I’ve named in my stead. There’s no way he’ll win, and he knows it.”

“And what makes you so fucking important to the Brigham family?” she snapped. “Why would you or your mother matter?”

“I’m Nicole Brigham Richards’s son,” he stated. “I’m Alex Brigham’s lost nephew, Grace. And I could rip that agency and that family apart if it’s what I wanted. And I will if they ever endanger me or what I consider mine, and that’s something Alex Brigham won’t chance.”

She seemed to stop breathing for a moment. “No,” she whispered. “You’re lying.”

“I stayed away from you all these years because I knew how betrayed you’d feel if you learned the truth,” he sighed wearily, knowing the time for hiding was at an end. “Just as I knew I wouldn’t let you go once I decided you were mine.” He reached out and touched her cheek gently before pulling back when she flinched. “This way, you can hate me until hell freezes over for a reason. For something I’ve done rather than something someone else did.”

The rumor that her father had died protecting the missing Brigham heir haunted her, he knew. Vinny had warned him more than once that if Grace ever learned he was that missing heir, she’d never forgive him for the death of the father she’d so loved.

“I’d rather face an interrogation.” Jumping from her chair, dumping the file to the floor, she moved away from him quickly.

Rising as well, Zack let his lips quirk satirically. “Well, that’s too bad, sweetheart,” he informed her, hating himself, hating the Brighams, and letting her hate him all she needed to. “Because I’m not nearly so willing to let the bastard who killed my parents and your father escape, now that I know how close he is. Luce was in on it every step of the way, working directly with the bastard who arranged it. It stops here.” It would stop before it endangered her further; he’d make damned sure of it. “Because I’m damned tired of living under the shadow of it. Resign yourself to it. You might not be willing to be a lover, but by God, you better be a good-enough actress to convince everyone we know that you are, because that’s all that will save any of us now. Including the family willing to put their lives and the lives of the men who follow them on the line. Because that’s all that’s going to call that fucking family off and make it stick until we find the evidence to clear you or until we find the evidence period.” He turned and stalked to the door of the office. “And I’ll be a son of a bitch if I’ll feel guilty for a second of it.” He slammed the door closed behind him.

After stomping through the foyer to the front door, he let it slam behind him as well. His truck was waiting in the front drive now, having been driven back by one of Chaz McDougal’s men and left at the farm. Within seconds, Zack was out of the driveway and heading farther up the mountain.

Making a call to his foster brothers to meet him at the office, he resigned himself to their coming anger as well. He’d played the role of quiet, unassuming Zack with a zeal that should have won him an Oscar.

Quiet, yeah, he liked quiet.

Unassuming? That one had never been easy. Just as the summers his foster father had convinced him to spend with the Brighams had never been easy. When Toby told the other two foster sons he had taken under his wing that he’d arranged for Zack to work with the Brighams in the summer after Zack turned eighteen, he hadn’t been lying. Zack worked his ass off training to become the killer they’d wanted him to be. As though he’d turn into one of the jackasses he’d despised since first learning of them.

The price of their silence at the time had been high. His mother’s father, Alexander Sr., had been a bastard with a capital
B.
Zack had realized within days of first meeting him exactly why his mother had turned her back on her family and run away with her lover.

How they managed to hide within the Kin, Zack had never figured out. Vinny’s and Benjamin’s help aside, it should still have been impossible to hide from the agents the Brigham family would have sent out after them.

It was a question he’d never been able to get an answer for, though. Not from Vinny and not from Alex Brigham, the man who had once claimed to cherish his baby sister.

Turning into the parking lot of the offices of the construction company he owned with his foster brothers, Zack blew out a harsh breath. Telling Jazz and Slade who he was wouldn’t be easy. It was a truth he’d never confronted them with, one he’d fought to hide for as long as he’d known them.

Both men were already there, just as he’d known they’d be. Jazz wouldn’t head out to the work sites until after ten, and Slade didn’t schedule meetings until ten thirty unless all three of them needed to be present.

When he pulled in beside Jazz’s pickup, the
RIGOR CONSTRUCTION
advertisement on the side of the door brought a quirk to Zack’s lips. The other man had flatly refused to have the company information painted on the truck until he’d become engaged to Vinny’s daughter, Kenni. Now his brother was settling down, finding the happiness that had eluded him for so long, and working on a future with the woman he loved.

Slade had settled down as well. His time with the FBI was behind him, and reclaiming the woman he’d fallen in love with years ago had settled a core of rage in the man that Zack had once feared would never disappear.

He envied them their lives, envied them the women who loved them. It was a life Zack had never allowed himself to imagine, because he’d known his past and his identity would endanger any family he tried to claim as his own.

He stepped from the truck, strode to the door, and entered the offices, steeling his determination.

Jazz and Slade were at the conference table in the back corner, coffee steaming in the mugs sitting in front of them as their conversation halted, their gazes settling on him.

“Well, aren’t you running a little late?” Jazz said, his black brows arching with the comment as mockery gleamed in his brilliant blue eyes.

He wasn’t in the best of moods.

“And no bruises or broken bones.” Slade grinned. “I thought Cord and his heathen brothers would have tromped his ass after he insisted on staying the night with little Grace.”

Flicking both men an irate glance, Zack moved to the coffeepot, poured a cup of the aromatic brew, then took a seat at the end of the table facing them. “We need to talk,” he stated, running the fingers of one hand through his hair.

Damn, he wasn’t looking forward to this.

“Think this is where he finally tells us his momma was a Brigham and he’s been visiting good old Uncle Alex when he disappears every month?” Jazz asked, his tone a little too calm, a little too conversational.

Zack simply stared back at the two men.

“We’ve known that one for a while, Zack,” Slade informed him. “Ever since I found out it was Brigham agents who helped save my ass in D.C. I’m not the kind of man not to ask questions in those situations.”

Hell.

He shook his head, resigned. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“It was your secret.” Slade shrugged. “I figured you’d tell us when the time was right for you.” He glanced at Jazz. “Asshole over there knew before I did, though, and didn’t say a damned thing about it until I told him what I learned after the D.C. operation.”

They hadn’t even hinted that they knew the truth of who he was, of where he came from.

“Toby told me who you were right before he died,” Jazz admitted before sipping at his coffee. “I thought it best to wait for you to come to us.” His lips quirked. “Just never thought it would take so long.”

They had known and never made accusations, never came to him when they needed to. Of course, Zack had helped where he could, and Alexander Brigham never denied him the resources or information he’d needed.

“I always had your backs—”

“We knew that, always have.” Jazz nodded. As the eldest of them, Jazz had always been the one to look out for his younger foster brothers while they were growing up. He’d always seemed to know them better than they’d known themselves.

“Come on, Zack, we knew the power we were gaining within the Kin wasn’t because of our good looks.” Slade rubbed his jaw and flashed an amused grin. “Though I’m sure that didn’t hurt.”

Jazz snorted at the comment before his gaze sharpened on Zack once again. “You’re our brother, Zack—where your blood came from never mattered. I remember your momma, she was a fine woman and your dad was a damned good man. You’re our brother, though, nothing else ever mattered to us.”

“I did appreciate the team of agents that watched my back in D.C., though,” Slade assured him.

“Yeah,” Jazz drawled. “And I know that team that took Luce in for interrogation was already waiting in the wings in case we needed outside help. I appreciated that.”