“Starting with Gavin.”
Slade shook his head. “Hell, no. She’d worked her way through a bunch of men before she got her hooks into him.”
“Gavin has always been so smart. Why would he let someone like her get close?”
“It was a difficult time for him,” Slade said slowly. “Our father was gone. We had just found you. Gavin got lost trying to save the company. I let him.”
“You were barely eighteen.” Dex remembered that time as the greatest of his life. He’d found brothers who’d seemed to embrace him, and he’d started college. Until Gavin and Slade had shown up, he’d been pretty sure he wouldn’t see a college campus unless he was cleaning it.
Many rich families would have never contacted him, much less welcomed him with open arms and offered to pay for his education.
But those years had been hard for Gavin. He’d barely graduated from college himself when he’d been forced to delve into the shark-infested waters of corporate life. If their father hadn’t stubbornly held onto the majority of the stock, Black Oak Oil would have likely been savaged and broken up.
Gavin had saved it for his brothers. Yeah, he owed Gavin.
“I remember Nikki, but only a bit.” Dex flushed. He hadn’t wanted to admit this. “She came on to me one night.”
“Join the club. What kills me is that Gavin wasn’t in love with her. I think he liked the sex.
She was very passionate. They fought constantly. At the time, some demon in him craved that drama. Maybe it took his mind off everything else.” Slade shrugged. “I don’t know.” And Dex could just bet that Nikki had made up for all that arguing in bed. “I remember a couple of breakups. They always seemed permanent, but the next week she’d be back.”
“She always managed to lure him in again. But finally, he’d had enough and decided to break with her for good. Two days later, she died from an overdose. The police report says it was an accidental suicide—a cry for attention—but Gavin hasn’t been the same for the last decade. I don’t get it. He isn’t pining for her.” Slade shook his head. “Maybe he feels responsible, but he didn’t shove a bunch of pills down her throat.”
Sometimes it didn’t take having an actual hand in something to make a man feel guilty. Dex knew that. He felt guilty about his own damn birth. His mother had been sweet, but not too smart. She’d had to work two jobs to try to support him after her lover had shoved a ten thousand dollar check her way and told her to get an abortion. When he was a kid, he’d often thought she would have been better off if she had. If she’d followed Stuart James’s instructions, she wouldn’t have been working late in a bar. She wouldn’t have been in a car that broke down. She wouldn’t have been hit by a passing drunk driver.
Dex shook it off. His mother had loved him and done her best to provide. She wouldn’t want him to feel guilty for anything. Maybe that’s why Dex could let go of the guilt and Gavin couldn’t. If Nikki could see Gavin’s torment, she’d be eating it up.
“We have to talk to him, convince him to let this go,” Dex insisted. He was going to make this right with his brother and give Hannah the complete happiness she wanted and deserved.
Slade smiled and put a brotherly hand on his shoulder. “I can’t tell you how much that means to me, man. Yeah, let’s find him and have a chat. Then we’ll all take our girl out and show her the mountains.”
Hannah would look beautiful lying back on a field of green grass. It had only been a few hours since he and Slade had cleaned her up and begun preparing her ass. His dick got hard at the memory of Slade sliding that pink plug deep inside her. Her eyes had widened, and a breathy moan had oozed from her throat. He’d almost come in his jeans right then and there. If he and Slade hadn’t made the agreement to let her recover during the morning, he would have pulled her close and seen just how tight her pu**y would be when her ass was filled.
He glanced down at his watch. Four p.m. He smiled. They had really only agreed to leave her alone for the morning.
“You’re thinking what I’m thinking.” Slade grinned. When it came to Hannah, they were always thinking the same thing.
They rounded the corner that would take them to the bedroom they shared with Hannah when they saw him.
Gavin stood in the doorway, his eyes haggard, staring at them. Dex had never seen his brother look so disheveled and distraught. Something had gone terribly wrong. How much had he heard? Had their discussion about Nikki put him in this state?
“Gavin, what the f**k?” Slade grabbed the empty bottle of vodka in his brother’s hand.
“What is wrong with you? Did you drink all of this today?”
“Yep. I came looking for another, but I didn’t want to interrupt your brotherly chat.” Slade stopped, cursed at the haunted look in their big brother’s eyes. “Tell us what happened.”
Gavin’s lips quirked up, but he radiated pure self-loathing. “Everything. Some of it was so long ago. But no matter how deep you bury it, that shit always comes back to haunt you.”
“If talking about Nikki is upsetting you this much, I’ll back off,” Dex vowed. Gavin needed to heal, but he wasn’t willing to hurt his brother to force the issue.
Shaking his head, Gavin stepped carefully across the room. His defeated mien contrasted sharply with the sunny kitchen table. “It doesn’t matter. The entire ugly story will be out in the papers by tomorrow.”
Slade slid Dex a long, worried look as he sat down beside Gavin. “The whole story about Nikki?”
Gavin nodded, eyes squeezed tightly shut, torment clearly wracking him.
“Did you kill her?” Dex asked calmly. “Have they dug up evidence? Is there time to make it go away?”