Page 98 of My Brother's Best Friends

“Oscar.” Alex tries to reason with me, but I’m one too many drinks in—and too angry.

“No.I’m right. You both know it. We’re still the civil ones here. In the meantime, Melanie gets to prance around and spew her venom, and we’re supposed to take the high road? Even now?”

“What do you suggest, then?” Kellan asks.

My blood boils, but a solution forms—the one thing we swore we’d never do. “Reach out to our PI buddy,” I say.

“What?” Alex gasps.

“We’ve all been thinking about it. Might as well do it,” I reply with a shrug. “Have him look into Melanie again. She’s under the impression that she won the war. Given her filthy and predictable character, she’s too busy gloating to watch her back. Soon enough, if she hasn’t already, she’ll find someone else to squeeze and ultimately destroy. Why give her that satisfaction?”

Kellan thinks it over, and Alex notices. “Kel, don’t tell me you’re considering it.”

“It’s worth a shot.”

“It is, I reiterate. It might not get any results, but it’s worth a shot. Maybe then… Maybe then Callie and Bryan will see who they’re dealing with,” I add. “Though I still maintain that somewhere deep down, Callie is definitely aware of how extreme her sister can be. I think she’s in denial.”

“Exposing Melanie might be the switch Callie needs too,” Kellan says, following my train of thought.

“Maybe we can talk to her,” Alex suggests.

“To whom?”

“Melanie.”

“You’re joking,” I say.

He shakes his head. “She knows the truth. She’s profiting from the lies. Maybe, somewhere deep down, there is still that version of Melanie that loves her sister. If we could… I don’t know, make her see how much she’s hurting Callie, it could at least get her to open up.”

“Melanie chose money and chaos over everything,” I remind him. “She knew the Sweden trip was Bryan’s proposal. She waltzed in and stirred the pot because she doesn’t care about Callie. But you just gave me another angle, Alex—thanks.”

He frowns slightly. “That wasn’t my intention.”

“It’s very honorable what you’re trying to do here, brother,” Kellan says. “You’ve always been the peacekeeper among us. But we’re not at peace anymore.”

“We’re at war,” I add.

It’s time we started acting like it.

“It’s our turn,” Kellan agrees. “We just need to build an ironclad case against her. We start with our PI’s upcoming research, and we end with the settlement we already paid. And the non-disclosure agreement she signed as part of that settlement is about to come back to bite Melanie in the ass. We held off on thisbecause we didn’t want to hurt Callie in the process… you know, collateral damage.”

“I don’t know about you, Alex, but I’m done being the better man,” I say.

There is no way in hell I’m letting an unstable fiend like Melanie destroy everything we worked so hard to build. It’s bad enough we’re struggling to keep our friendship with Bryan from eventually sinking. It’s bad enough we can’t go anywhere near Makayla just yet. It’s bad enough we already paid through the nose to keep Melanie from running her lying mouth around town, only for her to do it anyway once greed set in.

What she did in Sweden cannot go unpunished.

Legally and morally, she has to pay.

30

MAKAYLA

“You take care of yourself, too, big bro,” I say, laughing lightly as I hang up.

“Was that Bryan?” Janet asks, walking in from the kitchen.

“Always the worrier,” I reply. “But look at us. We’ve already made so much happen…”

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