Leo walked to the desk. “Why don’t you check the drawers while I try to figure out the password for the computer?”
They were looking for something. But, what?
Thea sat on the floor and opened the bottom desk drawer, which I knew was where Dad kept the files for ongoing business deals. They couldn’t possibly be interested in anything in there.
I was already halfway to my SUV when Leo pushed the keyboard away from him in frustration. Of course, he couldn’t break in after a few minutes of mindless guesses. Dad wasn’t one of those imbeciles who used a family member’s name or birthday. His password would be made up of a random assortment of upper-case and lower-case letters, numbers, and symbols.
Forcing myself to put my phone in the cupholder, I kept listening while I drove. It was mostly the sound of rustling papers and drawers opening and closing. Nothing Thea or Leo said provided any hint as to what they were searching for.
Once again, they were deep into some kind of scheme, and they were trying to leave me out of it. But, this time, I wasn’t letting them. Thanks to my covert surveillance of the office, I would force them to let me in on the secret.
After Dad gave me the “you need to toughen the hell up” lecture a couple of weeks ago, I’d known I needed to take more drastic measures to earn his respect. My position at the head of Sharpe Shipping would never be handed to me—I had to make it happen.
So, I installed several discreet cameras and programmed the system to alert me anytime someone entered the office. I’d been listening in on his conversations for the last week, using the information I gleaned to tailor my business proposal to one of the deals he was currently negotiating.
Dad would probably be pissed when I confessed to spying on him. But if he wanted proof that I could be tough—ruthless—then I was more than willing to give it to him. I might not have his blood running through my veins, but I was still a Sharpe, damn it.
Pulling up to the house, I tossed my earbuds on the dashboard and grabbed my phone. Then I ran upstairs and opened the, now unlocked, door to the office.
Thea yelped at the intrusion, but Leo just looked at me blankly. Before I could say anything, Thea stood and started talking. “This is all on me. Don’t blame Leo.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Why don’t you start by tell me what this is?” She bit down on her bottom lip, something that should have made my dick stir. But, instead, all I felt was disappointment. “You don’t trust me.”
“It’s not that,” she hedged, though she shouldn’t have bothered. Her uncertainty was written all over her face.
“Yeah, it is.” I waved a hand toward my brother. “Clearly, you trust him, but you don’t trust me.”
Thea took a tentative step toward me. “It’s just, Vincent can’t know anything about this.”
“You don’t think I already figured that much out?”
“I know.” She shoved her hands in her pockets. “But it’s also that I think you don’t want to hear what I have to say.”
My body itched to go to her. To wrap her in a hug and assure her that she could tell me anything, whether I wanted to hear it or not. But that wasn’t my place—it was Leo’s.
So, I kept my arms crossed over my chest and forced my expression to remain stoic. “You should have thought about that before breaking in here, where anyone could see you.”
“I can’t believe I got caught twice,” she said more under her breath than to me.
“Twice?”
Leo laughed. “Yeah, I caught her trying to pick the lock.”
The knot in my chest eased slightly. This hadn’t started out as a group project. Thea had been trying to break in on her own.
“What is so important that you had to get in here?”
Thea walked past me and shut—and locked—the door. “It all started the day of my mom’s funeral.”
When she finished her story probably ten minutes later, I could tell she was waiting for me to jump to my dad’s defense. I’d been called “suck up,” “brown-noser,” and “daddy’s boy” by my brothers enough times to know what everyone thought of me.
But, despite what anyone else believed, I wasn’t unaware of Dad’s flaws. He was intelligent, ambitious, and disciplined, all traits I