a second. The only plan I had wasn’t going to go over well with my accountant, but it was worth it. I held up one finger to my brothers and took out my phone again, pulling up his name in the contacts. He transferred me, rather reluctantly, to the lender at my bank.
“Hello, Mr. Anderson, what can I do for you?” he said.
“I was calling to ask about the loan I applied for,” I said. “Has there been any movement on that?”
“Let me check,” he said, and I could hear the sound of his fingers typing on a keyboard. “Ah, yes, it looks like I just received word that you are approved. Would you like to come by tomorrow and sign the paperwork?”
I grinned. “I’ll be there bright and early. Thank you.”
“Well?” Mason said as I rejoined the group. “What was that?”
“Just follow me,” I said and made my way to the Realtor.
“Ah, do we have a deal?” she said, suddenly dropping the sad act.
“We do,” I said. “I will have the down payment for you tomorrow.”
The Realtor drew herself up, placing her hand out to shake and slapping on a smile. “I will wait for you at the office,” she said. I took her hand and shook firmly, stepping a little closer to her and dropping my voice an octave.
“If the other interested party calls you, you’re out to lunch. Right?” I asked through the gritted teeth of a smile.
“Indeed,” she said, wrenching her hand from mine at the first opportunity.
As she took off, my brothers gathered around me, and we made our way back to our cars.
“We need to go see Danny,” Jordan said. “I need to have a talk with him.”
“The hell you do,” Mason replied. “The time for talk is way over. Now he needs a couple fists to the face.”
“Guys, we have to calm down,” I said. “I know we’re all pissed, and Danny clearly deserves whatever you have in your head about how you would remedy him. But if we went down there right now, it would just give him a heads-up that we know he’s in the market for the spot and that we haven’t gotten it yet.”
There was a pause as everyone thought through it. Tyler kicked at a rock and sent it down the drive toward the store.
“Hey,” I said, “careful. That’s our rock now.”
That got a smirk out of him and seemed to break the tension of the group. I looked back over the building and the lot and clapped Mason on the back. He turned to me and then to the lot himself. For a quiet moment, we all took it in, each of us undoubtedly envisioning what it could be.
“This is going to work,” I said. “Not only is it going to work, but it is going to be great. We will set up our new bar here, maybe expand into a full-fledged restaurant, and get in on the ground floor of the expansion of this part of the city. And Danny is going to be left in the cold where he is. He can’t come up with that kind of money, and we all know it.”
There was a general murmur of agreement and shaking of heads.
“He still deserves a boot in his ass,” Jordan grumbled.
“He does,” I said. “But for right now, I am content with him helplessly watching while we thrive. Besides, we need to get the down payment first.”
Tyler and Mason exchanged a glance at that and then at me.
“So, what’s the plan there?” Tyler asked.
“I’m getting a loan,” I said.
“Christ, seriously?” Mason said, frustrated.
“It’s only for a short time,” I said. “Look, the insurance money will be back to us in a week or two. But I don’t trust that Realtor as far as I can throw her.”
“Yeah, she seemed a little weird,” Jordan said, rubbing the back of his neck.
“Not just weird, untrustworthy. I don’t for one second believe she won’t go trotting to her phone to call anyone who might be interested in this property and try to jack the price up at the last minute. So, I’m getting a loan and when the insurance money comes in, I can pay most or all of it off, and the rest can go to building the interior, okay?”
“And you’re sure we can’t just drive by Danny’s and throw a few rocks through his windows?” Jordan asked, getting a big laugh from the rest of us. I was struck in that moment that no