Page 59 of Always Salty

Chevy leaned back and crossed his hands over his chest, eyes on his brother.

I took the seat directly across from Keely and next to Cutter.

“We’re going to talk about this after we’re done,” Cutter grumbled under his breath.

I grunted in answer.

“What’s going on?” Keely asked as she took her seat.

Copper started pushing food toward us and I reluctantly opened the bag that had grease stains in the wake of the bag sliding.

Pancakes, biscuits, scrambled eggs, bacon, and a shit ton of jelly and syrup.

I pulled out the bacon and eggs and started eating.

Mostly, they were about as good as you could ask for.

I preferred egg whites and turkey bacon, but I’d live.

As I ate, I listened to Keely and the three brothers discussing the business and found it thoroughly boring.

Basically what I got from it was that the top shareholders had been embezzling money for years, and Copper was discussing what was next.

Next being cops, lawyers, and a whole lot of shit that I didn’t want to deal with.

Luckily, the only reason Copper needed the three of the siblings there was that with them all, they owned the majority share of the business. And even with the top three shareholders not selling their shares, they still owned the majority and could take the business any which way they wanted.

Cutter and Chevy immediately offered to sell their shares.

Keely looked at her brother a little longer and said, “Do you need me here, Copper?”

Copper looked at her.

“Long term, if you don’t want to be here, then no. I don’t need you here. But short term, until we can transition everyone over to me, yes.” He looked from her to the brothers and back. “The money you saved for me over the last fifteen years was very generous, and I can easily buy the three of you out of your shares.” He looked ravaged. “I can never thank you enough for all that you’ve done.”

I started tuning in at that.

In my sleuthing, I’d seen that they all three had accounts that they used to save money each month. Though Keely’s was quite a bit smaller than the ones that her brothers had managed.

However, the money that Keely had drawn from the Castanon Enterprises had gone untouched since she’d started drawing a salary.

I’d noticed yesterday when I’d gotten an alert about the account that it was now empty and had all been transferred into a separate account that also had Copper as the main account holder, with Keely as a signer on the account.

“Copper,” Keely whispered. “All of that money would’ve been yours anyway had you been able to work.”

“You’re wrong,” he disagreed. “Y’all wouldn’t have had to give up part of your salaries each month, or work quite as hard, if I’d also been here. But I’m not going to get into an argument with you about it. I’m going to just say thank you, buy out your shares, build up this business, then spend the rest of my life thanking you in any way that I can.”

“Copper…” Cutter said.

“You’ll have babies,” Copper interrupted.

“Yeah…” Cutter hesitated.

“And if you won’t take the money for yourself, you’ll take the money for them.” He looked at me then. “Not saying that Milena and you won’t already be set for life thanks to other extracurriculars, but at least when it comes from me, you won’t be worried about a government investigator questioning how you got it.”

I flashed my teeth at him.

We cleaned our money very fuckin’ well, thank you very much!

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