Kerri forced a smile. Meredith has no idea what kind of fraud I am. She should probably tell everyone the truth, but she couldn’t bear to see their faces close off, the finality as they cut her from their midst. She’d experienced that with her own family, and couldn’t bear to repeat it with Ethan’s. “I think you guys are just going through some tough times. Don’t worry about me.”
*
Ethan and Gavin dragged Jacob out of the house. The woman followed them out when the other Lloyds created a hard-faced phalanx around Stella.
Once outside, Ethan pushed Jacob away. His older brother stumbled a couple of paces, regained his balance, then faced Ethan, running a hand through his unkempt hair. “What the fuck, bro? I have every right to be in there. I’m a member of this family too.”
“I’m going to leave you two alone,” Gavin said, taking Jacob’s stripper—or showgirl, whatever—by the arm. “Come on, honey, let’s take a walk.” The woman went with him willingly enough, although she cast a couple of glances back over her shoulder as Gavin led her away.
“What you are is a disgrace,” Ethan bit out. “Haven’t you done enough?”
“What? What did I do?”
“Don’t you know the kind of shape TLD is in? Christ, no wonder you didn’t want us to look at it very closely.”
“Ah, piss off. I provided for the family, while you and Gav went out and did your own thing.”
Ethan could barely control his fury, but he did so for the sake of his family inside. They didn’t need a brawl on top of everything else. “You told us not to interfere with the business, that you had it under control. None of us had any reason to doubt you when you said business was booming and kept depositing money into everyone’s account.”
“So what’s the problem? I worked my ass off to make the payments.”
“No, you worked your ass off to cover up how bad things were. You fucking borrowed money to pay dividends! Who the hell runs a company like that? Why didn’t you say something?”
“And what? Not pay? How would the family have afforded its caviar?” Jacob sneered.
Ethan ground his teeth. “I didn’t need the money. Neither did Gavin. Neither did several others who had their own means.”
“People always need money,” Jacob said stubbornly.
Ethan swore and turned away in disgust. Jacob hadn’t asked for help, not because he thought he was doing well, but because he couldn’t stand the idea of admitting a screw-up. Never mind who got hurt so long as his pride remained intact.
“I’ll tell you something, little brother,” Jacob said to Ethan’s back. “You don’t know jack. You always had it easy. Had things handed to you all your life. Women. Academics. Sports. Now your business success.”
Ethan spun around. “Success is never easy, you idiot! If I make it look easy to you, it’s because I don’t whine every time I have a setback the way you do. And I don’t have to have my name on every project, I don’t need to have a fancy title to make sure everyone knows how special I am. Those are things you need. You have to make sure everyone knows how hard you’ve worked, how important and awesome you are every damn second of the day. If you spent even a fraction of that energy on the legacy our father left for you to continue, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now!”
Jacob paled, but Ethan derived zero satisfaction from the psychological nails he knew he’d driven home. How could things have gotten to this point? He wished all he felt for his brother was anger. It’d be easier to deal with than this deep disappointment.
“So what you gonna do? Put her in charge of the company?” Jacob grated, his expression cold and hard once again.
“I might. Kerri couldn’t do a worse job than you have.”
“She’s the enemy.”
“I’m really getting sick of people saying that. How about you just think for a minute? If Kerri wanted to hurt this family, the best thing she could’ve done was tell me that everything was fine. I hadn’t had a chance to look at the TLD numbers as carefully as I needed to—too busy having all that undeserved success fall into my lap, you know—and I sincerely doubt Simon would’ve told me anything was wrong. Then you two could have driven TLD right into the ground before anyone knew what was happening.”
“Hey, Simon’s good at his job.”
“All Simon’s good at is kissing his boss’s ass.”
“Why couldn’t you have been more like Meredith?” Jacob’s voice grew louder. “She’s always grateful for whatever crumbs she gets. Unlike you, she knows her place in the family!”
Ethan shook his head, suddenly tired. Jacob would never acknowledge he’d done anything wrong. Ever since they’d been kids, if things went well it was due to his brilliance, and when things soured it was always somebody else’s fault.
“Just…go away, Jacob. You’ve done enough damage, and you’re drunk. And don’t even think about going after Catherine for cutting you off. You’re lucky that’s all she’s done so far.”
“Whoa, whoa, wait a minute. Seriously? Now you’re defending Catherine? She’s probably the one who’s been stealing from us. I know what your girlfriend found out. She thinks somebody might have embezzled funds.”
“We won’t know for sure until we finish an audit.”