Page 21 of The Acquisition

I nodded. "Good. Although, I don't think Maxwell will care. He seized Jana's apartment and froze all her other assets."

Beckett froze mid-stride to his coffee bar in his office. His eyes narrowed, and I knew the anger radiating off him would blow back on Maxwell Easton once I shared the full story with him.

"When?" His voice was low and deceptively calm.

"I suspect you already know the answer to that," I replied. Yes, I was purposely egging him on. Some people needed to be reminded that Beckett Anderson could be a ruthless asshole, and I couldn't think of a better candidate for that lesson than Jana's worthless father.

"The night Evie and I dropped her off from the club?"

Again, I nodded my head. Words weren't necessary, and I didn't particularly want to say or do anything to soften his anger.

Fitz clapped his hands. "Well, it's settled then. Jana is ours now, so she'll get those shares just as I'm going to give the same to Evie. Beck, do you mind if I give my ten percent to your wife?"

Beckett shook his head and continued over to the coffee nook in the corner of his office.

Fitz strolled over to me. "He's all wound up now. I'd almost feel bad for my nephew and Easton if I didn't dislike them both so much."

I shrugged. "I don't feel bad for any of them."

"I can see that. Why else would you twist him up like that?"

Years of being admonished for one childhood prank or another had me schooling my features.

"You can stop pretending innocence right now, Colter. You've been best friends with my son for thirty years now. We both know this isn't the first time you've set him to explode then turned him on your target. This time I agree with you, but it's about time you started doing your own dirty work."

"Oh, that time will come. I like to set my dominoes up just right first."

Fitz patted me on the back. "Let me know if you need any help knocking them down. I think I'd enjoy that a lot."

"You need a hobby, old man," I teased him.

He raised his eyebrows at me. "I'm not that old, and as long as I have Grace, I don't need a hobby."

"Well, now I know where he gets it from," I muttered.

He opened his mouth to issue a retort, but Mrs. Janek, Beckett's secretary, poked her head around the corner. She had lasted longer than his previous secretaries, having been at the company for a month now. He'd mellowed a bit with Evie in his life. Only a bit though, the woman still trembled like a leaf in a storm any time Beckett was near.

"Gentlemen, your guests have arrived. Sabrina helped me get them set up in the conference room."

"Thanks, Mrs. Janek," Beck replied, but the older woman was already hurrying away.

He shook his head. "I haven't done anything to her. I don't understand why she runs away from me every time she is done talking."

"Reputation, my boy," Fitz answered. He slapped him on the back and led the way out of the office.

Sitting through the board meeting while keeping my mouth shut was hard. I'd been so thrown learning I was a father and that my child was actually an adult woman, that I missed all the other events going on around me. I knew Beckett was having problems with his cousin because he told me, but I should have noticed the financial dealings of the board members when it came to AG.

When Franklin, Beck's cousin, was dismissed from the meeting I wasn't surprised. He wasn't smart enough to launch a campaign to take over the company. I'd always assumed there was something more to it, but I'd thought it was another relative. Fitz told us on the plane what Maxwell had been doing, which filled in the last bits of information I was missing to figure out what he'd done with Jana's trust fund.

The meeting was like watching a chess master play. Fitz and Beck masterfully moved Maxwell into a corner, but I don't think they realized the extent of what they were unveiling.

Beckett was busy detailing how they'd figured out Maxwell was behind Franklin's attempt to usurp control of AG when something he brought up caught my attention.

He was talking about the loan issued to bail Franklin out of a gambling debt he had with a pretty notorious bookie. "It was buried under shell companies."

I stopped listening to what he was saying at that point. I'd already heard his plan to expose how he'd learned the plan to call in the loan and take the shares of the company from Franklin, who had an obvious gambling addiction.

It was a startling revelation, sure, but not as dramatic as the picture forming for me. It wasn't necessarily illegal to set up a shell company, but there weren't many reasons for an ethical business to form one. I found it unlikely Maxwell Easton fell within the very small minority not using this structure to do anything more than hide money and avoid paying taxes.

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