Page 1 of Billionaire Unexplained: Kaleb

Kaleb

“If you’re not home as soon as this snowstorm ends, Devon and I are coming to get you,” my brother, Tanner, warned me the second I picked up the satellite phone in the remote cabin. “I’m not saying that you don’t desperately need a break from work, but we both know that’s not what you’re doing at the cabin right now.”

I raked a frustrated hand through my hair as I sat down on the bed in the bedroom of the cabin. Hell, I probably shouldn’t have answered the phone, but there was a raging spring snowstorm going on outside, and I didn’t want my family to be concerned about me.

I had left my home in Crystal Fork, Montana pretty abruptly a few days ago.

“I just needed a few days alone to think,” I admitted to Tanner.

There was no way I was going to convince my brother that I was taking a few days off to do some fishing or rest and relax here in this remote location.

We’d just gotten back from my cousin Shelby’s wedding in San Diego when I’d decided to bolt.

Tanner knew that wasn’t a coincidence.

There was definitely a downside to being so close to my two younger brothers. We knew each other so well that they immediately knew when I was doing something out of character.

The truth was, I wasn’t usually the kind of guy who left at a moment’s notice to pull his head together.

I was generally the way-too-serious, eldest Remington brother who didn’t know when to stop working.

“You have to stop feeling guilty about what happened to Shelby,” Tanner said firmly. “We were just at her wedding, Kaleb. She’s healthy and happier than she’s ever been.”

What my brother was saying was very true. Shelby, who was more like a little sister to me than a cousin, had just married one of my best friends in San Diego. She was ecstatically happy with Wyatt, and I was grateful that she was finally with the man she deserved.

It was just damn hard to forget how close she’d come to never seeing that wedding or a happily ever after.

All because I’d chosen work over her safety.

“It wasn’t your fault, Kaleb,” Tanner said like he’d been reading my thoughts. “It was six months ago. The kidnapping is in the rearview mirror for her now. Let it go.”

Easy for him to say. Tanner isn’t the one who left Shelby alone in the barn and vulnerable.

Now, every time I saw her, I was reminded that I’d failed to protect her from falling into the hands of a serial killer.

I had recurrent nightmares about the event, even though I hadn’t been the one to rescue her. For a while, I’d had them nearly every night after she was rescued. As the months had gone by, they’d gotten better, but seeing her again last week had triggered a hellacious nightmare when I’d returned from her wedding.

I’d literally been a bystander in that nightmare while Shelby was being abused and murdered. It was vivid, probably triggered by being at her wedding. I’d woken up in a cold sweat, reliving that damn nightmare over and over while I was awake.

It was so bad that I’d needed to get away for a few days, and for some reason, I’d been drawn to the remote cabin I hadn’t visited in a very long time.

In retrospect, maybe the remote cabin hadn’t been such a great idea. It left me alone with my thoughts way too much, and the guilt of what I’d done was still eating me alive.

I’d known that Shelby was vulnerable, and that she had a possible stalker.

Maybe I’d only left her alone for a few minutes to finish a work call, but it had been long enough for her to get kidnapped and live out a horrifying ordeal that never should have happened.

No, she hadn’t been murdered or raped, but she would have been if she hadn’t gotten rescued when she did.

“It was my fault,” I said hoarsely. “I wasn’t there for her.”

Just like I hadn’t been there when my dad had died of a heart attack three years ago. None of us had been in Crystal Fork then. My mother had been alone until we’d been able to get back home. My brothers and I had been away on what we’d considered a very important business trip out of the country at the time.

Yeah, maybe I couldn’t have predicted what had happened to my father. There had been zero warning signs that he was going to die anytime soon. But he was older, and I now regretted not spending more quality time with him.

Hell, now that I’d turned forty years old, maybe I was trying to get my priorities straight.

I’d spent all of my adult years chasing business goals. Now that I’d realized all of those ambitions, I was starting to recognize that I’d been a selfish prick.

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