at me. “I’m so mad at you right now, Nolan Finnegan Lund.”
Full-name mad. “Come in anyway.” I shut the door and followed them into my living room. Might make me selfish, but I was happy I’d put away my spendy bottle of scotch because I didn’t feel like sharing it. “Can I get you something to drink?”
My dad saw the finger of amber liquid remaining in my glass, opened his mouth to ask for the same thing I was having, but my mom shook her head at him.
Defiant, he locked his stare to hers. “Nothing for me, thanks.”
She said, “Oh, don’t be such a baby, Archer,” and steered him to the couch. “Doctor’s orders.”
Mom perused my space as Dad and I avoided eye contact. “I forget how perfectly you this house is. I love it.”
“It’s funky but it works for me.” I took a tiny sip of my scotch, closing my eyes for a moment to savor the complex flavors.
“Does this place work for Gabi?”
“It did. I haven’t heard from her after the earlier revelations about the new ownership at Wolf Sports North.”
“Son. We had no idea Gabi had gotten a job offer from them.”
“Wasn’t something she could share, given she already had a job with Jax.”
“LuTek wasn’t supposed to announce it until next week. If you want, I could—”
I held up my hand. “The absolute worst thing you could do is speak on her behalf. Current management at Wolf has already accused her of getting the job offer due to nepotism. You forcing them to hire her would just prove that. She has to live with their final decision either way, but she knows she got the position on her own merit, even if they opt to pass on employing her now.”
“I wish the best for her. I really do. The only reason All Sports Central came onto our radar was because LuTek had purchased ESP. They believed we might be expanding operations in Duluth and they approached us. Initially, we turned them down. Then the LuTek financial team sent the breakdown of the increased revenue stream that could only happen with an FCC-approved merger. Brady said the numbers more than held up so that’s how it came about.”
“Which is why it makes no sense that you would hide that.”
He sighed. “Damn, son, you should’ve been a detective.”
“Excuse me?”
“We thought we’d buried that paper trail for the ESP acquisition, but little bloodhound you just kept sniffing and digging until you uncovered it.”
Stay calm. “I don’t like being locked out of information that by rights shouldn’t have required me to become a goddamned cyber detective to find.”
Mom put her hand on my knee. “We know. That’s your dad’s way of saying he’s proud of you. We both are. But you are missing several pieces of the puzzle and you deserve to know the truth.” She nudged Dad. “Go on. Tell him.”
“Six months ago no one at LI or LuTek had heard of ESP. I received a cold call email that said I needed to buy the company for twenty million dollars. I sent the email to spam and forgot about it. Two days later, I got the same type of email, a little more strongly worded. Again, I ignored it. The next time, the email came with a picture.”
“Of what?”
“Of Winita Lund. Beat to shit. It was an old picture, but it was very clear who was in it.”
Winita Lund was Zosia, Zeke and Zach’s mother. “Who would have that kind of picture?”
“That’s what we didn’t get. It was sensitive info, so I brought Ash and Brady in on it. The next thing that arrived via email was a handwritten account from some woman who we knew wasn’t Grover’s wife, detailing how Grover Lund had raped her.”
A chill went down my spine. “Jesus. Who sent it?”
“Be patient. I’m getting there. This person claimed to have photographic evidence going back almost forty years of Grover Lund’s psychopathic behavior. That’s when I knew we were being blackmailed. The prevailing wisdom is refusing to give in to these kinds of demands. Normally I would’ve turned it over to our lawyers, but I suspected the blackmailer’s reaction would be swift and harsh. When we found out who was sending us this stuff . . . to be honest, it knocked us for a loop.”
Mom leaned over and kissed his cheek. “I’ll get you a drink of water. Keep talking.”
“Who was blackmailing us?”
“The daughter of the woman Grover had raped. Scarlet Biersbach.”