Page 102 of Bad Seed

“I don’t want to hear that! No, that’s not going to work! Never mind. I’ll deal with it myself, like I should have done at the outset,” Tip said, and hung up as he entered the morning room.

“Good morning, Son,” Wilhem said.

Tip didn’t even look at him. “For some, I guess,” he said, and poured himself some coffee. “There isn’t any bacon on the sideboard! You know I want bacon for breakfast. This shriveled-up link sausage isn’t going to fly, dammit!”

Wilhem frowned. “The staff knows it. They’ve gone to get more. Calm down and sit down.”

Tip didn’t see the look of disapproval on his father’s face and was still ranting. “Worthless bunch of employees! I’ve a good mind to fire them all!”

Wilhem slapped the flat of his hand on the table, rattling the fork on his plate. “That does it! Enough! I don’t know what’s going on in your personal life, but it’s nothing that happened under this roof, so shut it down.As for hiring and firing, you’re not in charge yet. You’re the one tripping off to the foreign market all the time. You don’t have the first notion of how the business here runs!”

Tip stopped, shocked by the chastising he was getting. “Sorry, Dad. It’s just a lot going on right now. All the merchandise we had on hand went up in flames, and I’m thinking I need to make another trip oversees to—”

“To do what?” Wilhem roared. “We’re short a warehouse as it is. The other ones are full. We don’t have a place to put new merchandise. And if we did, you don’t need to go on a buying trip. Just contact the prior vendors and reorder, for God’s sake. You keep saying you want to help, and then you talk about leaving? You stay put and run the business as is, or if you don’t want to take it over, I’ll sell! Either way, I’m not putting up with your shit.”

Tip panicked. “No, don’t sell it! I never meant to imply—”

“Then go to work!” Wilhem said. “Go to the office. Business is happening. Tend to it! Or not! Either way, I don’t want to see your face in this house before dinner.”

Then Wilhem got up from the table and stormed out of the room, leaving Tip in utter shock. But it didn’t take long for the shock to be displaced by frustration. Playing tit for tat, Tipton stormed out of the house, unaware Wilhem had gone to the library and was on the phone, calling Harley Banks.

***

Harley was in the living room with her feet to the fire, going through email on her laptop when her phone rang. She glanced at caller ID and frowned. Wilhem Crossley? Should she answer? If she did, would he tell Tip? If he mentioned it to Tip, and he was the one issuing hits, then he’d know she wasn’t dead.

So, she let it ring and wondered what he wanted. Whatever it was, she was done with him and his son. A few minutes later, fresh from a shower and shave, Brendan joined her.

“Did I hear the phone?”

She nodded. “It was Wilhem Crossley. I didn’t answer.”

“Good move. That would have been proof to someone that the hit on you failed.”

***

Wilhem didn’t know what to think when Harley didn’t answer, and then chided himself for even making the call. She didn’t know any more now than she did when she was debriefed by the special agents before the raid.

When he heard Tip leaving, and then the screech of tires on pavement, a sure indication of his displeasure at being called down, Wilhem sighed.

“Act like a fool, get treated like one,” he muttered. “At least he’s out of the house, instead of skulking aroundlike he used to do when he’d been caught breaking rules.” And the moment he said it, a whisper of something dark slid through his mind, insidious even in thought, and so horrifying he couldn’t speak it aloud. But the longer he sat, the more impelled he felt to go look, if for no other reason than reassurance.

I’ll see for myself. Nothing will be off. And that will be that.

But his heart was pounding as he left the library and returned to the central part of the house, pausing in the grand foyer.

It’s not too late to let it go. Shame on me for even thinking it.

And yet he stood, considering the consequences that he might be opening a Pandora’s box of trouble.

To the right was the north wing of the mansion where Wilhem lived, and to the left, the south wing where Tip’s suite and office were located. He never intruded into Tipton’s world, and Tip never intruded into his. It had been an unwritten choice by the both of them when Tip moved back into the family home and went to work for his father.

But the longer Wilhem stood, the more random incidents he could recall that seemed odd at the time or seemed off. All of the times he’d ignored the obvious or taken Tip at his word, the more certain he was that secrets were being held under this roof. Unwritten rules or not, privacy issues or not, this was still his house. He turned to the left and walked up the grand staircase andinto the south wing, trying to remember how long it had been since he’d set foot on these floors. He went straight down the long hallway and opened the door into his son’s space. He paused on the threshold, staring about the suite in shock before walking into the room.

The decor was pure luxury, with furnishings Wilhem had never seen. White drapes. White furniture. A clear, bloodred vase strategically placed on a small table in front of a window to catch the last gasp of sunlight from each day.

Glass-topped tables in shiny chrome frames. Fine art and ancient wall hangings displayed on every wall, and bookshelves filled with things Tip had obviously collected from his foreign travels, and ancient, illustrated books depicting graphic poses of sex and porn. A copy of the Kama Sutra bookmarked to a particular page that even shocked a man as old as he was.

His hand was shaking as he put it back on the shelf and moved into the bedroom. By now, he was beyond surprise as he eyed the opulence of the black satin bedding as more of the same and the largest flat-screen television he’d ever seen as overindulgence.

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