Page 12 of Finding Lord Landry

I clicked through the tidy folders until I froze on the one named Landry. Inside were several emails from Lamar Duane, Landry’s agent. On most of them, I was only copied on the email. Landry had insisted his agent keep me in the loop since I maintained a master calendar for him and managed his travel arrangements.

But one of the emails had been sent directly to me and didn’t even copy Landry.

Why is he doing this, Kenji? Did something happen? I thought I’d have at least a few more years with him before he decided to pursue a different career.

I read the email two more times and then went back to read the others in the Landry folder. They were emails about his retirement from modeling. About decisions not to renew various contracts, to pull out of whatever projects he could pull out of, and to determine whether or not to announce his retirement or simply fade away.

I scrambled for my phone and powered it on to send him a text.

What the fuck? You’re retiring?

It was late, but New York was only an hour later than San Cordova. I waited for a response.

Landry

It’s four in the morning. And why do you have your phone on?

Four?It was only 11:00 p.m. in New York.

Answer my question.

My phone rang, the shrill blare of “I Don’t Need a Man” by Pussycat Dolls in the quiet room scaring the hell out of me.

I quickly pressed the button to answer it. “Tell me you’re not quitting as some kind of… grand gesture,” I began.

When his familiar voice came over the line, my eyes began to sting. Maybe I was allergic to long-distance phone calls all of a sudden. “Not everything is about you, Kenji.”

Great. Now, my pride was stinging, too. “No, I know. That’s not what I meant. I just… what’s going on? Where are you?” I asked, scrambling for his calendar to see if I’d overlooked a European job that would have put him in a different time zone.

“England. My father isn’t doing well.”

His voice was rough from sleep, but I could also hear the strain in it. Since I’d rarely heard of him visiting his father, I realized something must be very wrong for him to be there.

“Are you needed at home? To take care of him?”

The subject of Landry’s family was a touchy one, and he rarely talked about them to me or even anyone in the Brotherhood. We knew he had dual citizenship, due to having an American mother, and that she’d died after a serious illness while he’d been in high school. We also knew he was an only child.

But that wasallwe knew.

The Brotherhood seemed to think Landry’s reluctance to discuss his early life was because he’d grown up poor—maybe even as poor as Zane had—but privately, I wasn’t so sure. There was a quiet but arrogant confidence about Landry that reminded me of people with old money—bigmoney, the kind that came with power—which made me wonder whether there had been some kind of drama he didn’t want to share. Had his parents been into something shady? Had one of them done time for something he didn’t want us to find out about?

Possibly, I’d watched too many of Baa Baa’s soap operas.

In any case, it was clear I’d never know the truth. Anytime I asked in even the most casual way, Landry would shut me down with a firm “Let’s not talk about that, hmm?” or distract me with his talented lips and tongue until I couldn’t remember my own past, let alone his. All of which just went to prove that Landry might trust me to manage his billion-dollar investments and legal matters, as I did for the rest of the Brotherhood, and to keep a handle on his modeling career… but when it came to his family matters, I didn’t have the right security clearance to know a damn thing.

Which was one of many reasons Landry Davis annoyed the fuck out of me. He claimed to want a serious relationship with me, yethewas the one putting up giant barbed-wire roadblocks to keep me at arm’s length.

No one owed anyone else all the gory details of their past. I believed that. But at a certain point, his omissions had started to feel like a lie. And if Landry couldn’t be honest with me, any hope of a serious relationship was dead in the water.

“No, my father…” Landry began, stopping himself before continuing. “He’ll be alright.”

I held back a sigh. “Is he sick? Is it temporary? Maybe you could hire him some help and make sure he’s getting medical care?—”

“No. He has help and doctors and everything. It’s just… I feel pressure to be here.”

There was a thread of stress in his voice that made me wonder if this issue with his father had led to his sudden retirement from modeling.

“Are you… are you planning on moving back to England? Helping him more permanently?”

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