Page 3 of Plum

“Go after him, and thengo down.”

She stepped out of my way, letting out a fake little cry, and she jerked her chin toward Eric. Thomas Wade had backed off, but in one glance, I could tell Eric was still out of his mind.

I didn’t think. I wanted that big room. The roast. The peace and fresh air and quiet on the bluffs overlooking the river, Gilson Avenue so far away it might as well be a different world. What was a man’s respect to that?

I launched myself at Eric. He swung, and I slammed my face into fist, the connection rattling my jaw, and I fell to the ground, groaning.

Eric blinked in surprise.

On my back, in the lush, even grass, I stared up at the blue sky and drew in a deep breath of fresh, clean air.

“That’s enough now,” Thomas Wade declared. The look on his face was clear now. Pride. Relief.

And then, to my very great surprise, Eric leaned over and offered me a hand. I took it.

“It was a ringer,” he said.

“Bullshit,” I replied. “Let’s get a straightedge.”

So, we limped together back toward the house, Eric babbling a mile a minute about the game room in the basement, ping-pong and foosball and how goose season was soon, and did I have my hunting license?

I didn’t know shit about half of the things he said, but I wanted them—I wanted the kind of life where that’s the kind of shit you worry about—and I knew then that I was my mother’s son. I would do what I had to do to get that life. Pride is cheap. Once you’ve paid it, you realize it’s a small price.

What does pride really matter when you’re in a warm house on the bluffs, high above it all, nothing lurking around the corner? When you can put your fists down? When you have meat for dinner, and then you’re never, ever hungry again?

It’s a fair trade.

Anyone would make it.

CHAPTER 1

ADAM

Eric is still an asshole, but he’s my asshole.

Twenty years later, we’ve settled into our roles. He does what he wants. I use the chaos he creates as cover to disrupt an industry. Our dynamic has put us on the cover of tech magazines and made us Wall Street legends. We’re the wunderkinds who took Thomas Wade’s old-economy stock brokerage—headquartered in Godforsaken Pyle, Pennsylvania—and transformed the company into a tech juggernaut that revitalized the city.

I guess I could pay someone to babysit Eric. I could be back in my condo in the city with my tie off, watching Bloomberg with a glass of Glenfiddich.

Instead, I’m responding to emails on my phone in the corner of a dank, dimly lit champagne room in some backwater titty bar, ignoring one email in particular, trying to block out Eric as he talks dirty to a stripper. I’m on my fifth watered-down Jim Beam, my temples are throbbing, and my patience is frayed from four days straight of marathon negotiations in NYC.

With Eric, this sort of shit is a constant.

On the drive home, he got thirsty. Of course, he found the one place within a twenty-mile radius where he’s most likely to get himself into trouble. This time it’s a strip club on the outskirts of some shit town, an establishment called The White Van, notable only for being run by the Steel Bones Motorcycle Club. My cousin Des has dealings with the club. They’re not the kind of people you fuck with.

Eric’s life mission is to fuck with things he shouldn’t.

“You like that, don’t you, you little slut?” he asks the dancer who’s sucking his dick.

The dancer mumbles. Very noncommittal.

Tonight, Eric bumbled into the ripest little spinner, purple streaks in her blonde hair, dusting of freckles across her nose. The kind of heart-shaped ass you want to take a bite out of. After an offhanded “You’ll do,” Eric had his face buried in her tits so fast, I doubt he’d be able to pick her out of a line up.

I can see why he’s unimpressed—the girl’s nowhere near hot enough for the clubs in Pyle—but there’s something about her. In a room full of naked women, the first thing I noticed was her, the mean glare paired with the fake smile, the freckles that show through the caked-on makeup.

She’s quite the shark, too. She’s upsold Eric from a lap dance, to a jerk, and now a blow job. She’s adding up the charges, no partial refund for the unfinished dance or handy. This, by the way, is how Eric managed to overpay by ten-mil when we acquired Fortnum Kenney. He bought a subsidiary, and then he didn’t deduct the purchase price when he made our bid for the parent company. I still give him shit about how we paid twice for Fortnum Financial.

“Come on, baby. Take it all.” Eric groans, thrusting his hips while he sits in a chair. As always, he’s managed to sweat out his product, so his blond hair sticks up at all angles. “What, you don’t like work?”

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