Wright with Benefits (Wright Series #8) - K.A. Linde Page 0,88
pockets, realizing I didn’t have the thing on me. I didn’t even know where it was. I’d been distracting myself with work. It was easier than trying to learn to relax.
“I don’t have it on me. What’s wrong?”
“Well, I already talked to Hollin, but we have a problem.”
I sighed and headed into the kitchen. I pulled out two beers and dropped one on the counter for him. “Not sure I can have any more problems.”
Julian didn’t complain. He took the beer and chugged the entire thing. I narrowed my eyes at my brother. He liked to drink, but I’d never seen him chug before.
He dropped the empty beer down. “Can I have another?”
Now, I was concerned. I grabbed another one for him. “Fuck.”
“Yeah.”
He took another fortifying drink and then sank into a seat at the island. “Ashleigh and I broke up.”
This didn’t seem like a problem to me, but Julian had dated her for two years. It had to hurt.
“What happened? I thought you were happy.”
Julian pushed his phone across the table to me. I picked it up and saw it was open to an image folder. I clicked on the first one, which was a map of our winery. Pretty normal. I flipped to the next picture—the permit. The next—the offer. And then I saw what he’d clearly meant for me to see. Arnold Sinclair’s signature on these pages.
Something went cold inside me. “What the fuck is all this, Julian?”
“Exactly what it looks like. The place is haunted by the Sinclairs.”
“Why would Arnold Sinclair give a fuck about our winery?”
“Oh, he doesn’t. Those are forged signatures.” Julian took another long drink. “Ashleigh forged the signatures.”
I was silent. My mind whirring through all the possibilities of why his girlfriend would want to ruin the winery. But I came up with nothing.
“Is she out of her mind?” I asked.
“She wanted me to work for her family. She thought you were keeping me down or some other bullshit excuse that she’d invented. She wanted me to be beholden to her, and so she did this shit.”
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I ground out. “Man, this is…”
“Terrible,” Julian agreed.
“Manipulative and conniving.”
“Yep.”
“How’d you find all of this out?” I asked, passing his phone back.
Julian opened his mouth and then closed it. He looked away, as if he didn’t want to answer that or he didn’t have a good enough answer.
“Julian?”
“Fuck, I’m not supposed to tell you.”
“What? Why?”
Julian sighed as if he knew it’d come to this. “Annie found them. Though I wasn’t supposed to say that.”
“Annie?” I asked slowly, drawing her name out in disbelief. “Wait, was she at the Sinclair party tonight?”
He nodded. “Not with Chase,” he added hastily.
“Uh-huh.”
“Ashleigh brought her.”
“So she’d end up with Chase.”
“Just shut up,” Julian growled. “That’s not what happened, and if you’d get your head out of your ass, you’d realize that she just saved our fucking asses here. Now, we can go after the Sinclairs and get them to stop this shit. Because I’m ninety percent sure that she leaked the show with Campbell and called the police.”
It wasn’t often that Julian raised his voice. Let alone to me. But I could see that he was sincere. What mattered was the winery situation. I could process what Annie had been doing there later. Julian needed me, much like I’d needed him the night before.
“You’re right,” I said evenly. “She probably did both of those things.” I paused as something else came to me.
“What?” Julian asked.
“Ashleigh was the one who told me that Annie had gone over to Chase’s. She told me at the party. That’s right before we fought.”
Julian sighed heavily. “Fuck.”
“She really is sabotaging everything.”
“Yeah,” he said hollowly.
“I’ll get in contact with our attorney tomorrow. Have a cease-and-desist sent to the Sinclairs and threaten them with a lawsuit for falsified paperwork.”
Julian deflated at the words. As if he’d been waiting for the moment where I would take control and he wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore.
He dropped his head onto the counter. “What the fuck is wrong with me? How could I date someone for two years that does this shit?”
“This has nothing to do with you.”
“You never liked her,” Julian said.
“That doesn’t matter.”
“Everyone hated her.”
“You didn’t,” I reminded him. “Why…did you like her?”
He shrugged, looking back up at me. I wanted to build a wall around my little brother and make it so no one could ever hurt him again. But there was nothing I could do about this, and I just had to watch him