The Forgotten One (The Heirs #2)

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The contracts on Chase’s computer screen were making him cross-eyed. He took up space behind his desk at CMS and tried his best to focus on the tasks in front of him. Moving his company to the Stone building had been the right call.

Thinking he was going to be able to both run his company and be of any help to his sister on the top floor running Stone Enterprises was turning out to be a joke.

Especially when their stocks had taken a dive and there were whispers of pending layoffs.

Even though those two things weren’t remotely related, the staff and media linked them together, causing serious ripples in the executive chain.

Piper wasn’t sleeping well.

Alex practically lived in her office.

And none of them had practiced a sustainable work–life balance in months.

For the millionth time that year, Chase cursed his dead father for his lack of forethought or mentorship to prepare him and Alex for taking over the company.

Chase buried his head in his hands when a rapid knock on his open door pulled his attention away from his internal bitching.

Alex stood at his door, worry written all over her face.

“Now what?” he asked.

She stepped into his office and closed the door behind her.

Not a good sign.

“Do I want to know?” he asked her.

Alex shook her head as she crossed to the chair across from his desk and took a seat.

“I just got off the phone with Starfield. Good news ...,” she said without joy. “They’re pulling their offer off the table. Looks like we don’t have to vote on the acquisition after all.”

Chase was cautious. “Then why the look on your face?”

She leaned back, crossed one leg over the other, and started tapping her toe against the air. “Guess who bought them out?”

“Does it matter? It’s no longer our problem.”

Alex shook her head. “Paul.”

For a brief second, Chase didn’t register the name. He was expecting “something hotel group,” not a single name. Then it hit. “Yarros?”

Alex’s sinister smile followed a single nod.

“Does he have the funds for that?”

“Apparently ... since he sold his Stone Enterprises stock.”

Chase let his head spin on that for a few seconds. Yarros was the biggest pain on the board. Getting him out of their business didn’t sound like a losing situation in Chase’s head.

“I’m failing to see where this deserves all the tension rolling off your shoulders right now.”

“Ask me who bought his stock. Go on ... ask.”

This couldn’t be good. “Who?”

Chase could see the muscles in Alex’s jaw tense and worried that she was going to break a tooth.

“Who, Alex?”

She uncrossed her legs, stood, and placed both hands on Chase’s desk. “Melissa. He sold his fucking shares to Melissa!”

“Oh, fuck.”

“You bet your ass, ‘oh, fuck’! Just when we thought we were rid of that gold-digging wannabe, she’s going to be staring us down at our board meetings. Have a legitimate reason to be in this building.”

Chase’s head exploded with the information. He instantly tried to see a way out of Melissa being able to buy Yarros’s shares. “Can he do that?”

“Can and did.” Alex turned on her heel and started pacing Chase’s office.

“Melissa doesn’t have the kind of money it would take to buy Yarros’s shares.”

“No, she doesn’t. But she has a ‘silent investor’ that bankrolled her and gave her the seat on the board.” Alex was on the verge of yelling. No wonder she brought this information directly to him on the third floor instead of waiting for him to make his way upstairs.

“And when did this information come in?”

“Half an hour ago, Paul called me directly. Said ‘his hotel chain’ wasn’t interested in selling to us, and oh, by the way, he hoped we didn’t mind that our board meetings would look like a family reunion next month. The fucker.”

“If this is already a done deal, then Paul’s been working on this for a while.”

Alex pointed at him. “Exactly what I thought. Or ... or, Paul’s had his hand in Starfield all along. No wonder he was pushing for the acquisition.”

“Was his name part of the group that owned Starfield?”

Alex shrugged. “I have Piper running some searches now. If he’s there, it’s hidden.”

“If Paul had shares in Starfield and kept that from us during an acquisition ... that’s the legal definition of corporate fraud, isn’t it?”

“Sounds like it to me. Only the acquisition didn’t go through. He knew damn well during that last board meeting that we weren’t going to move forward.” Alex stopped at the window, placed a hand to the side of it, and stared out.

“We need Legal,” both Chase and Alex said at exactly the same time.

“I was really hoping we could get through the first year in this building without ending up in court.”

Chase stood and walked around his desk to his sister. “Let’s not jump ahead.” Chase placed his hands on Alex’s shoulders and squeezed.

Twenty minutes later, Alex regained her composure and walked out of his office as if she didn’t have a care in the world.

Chase then made two phone calls. One to Busa and the other to Nick.

“She needs a spa day,” he told Nick. “Don’t let her talk about work.” Chase gave Nick his credit card number, with no spending limit.

“Consider it done,” Nick had said.

Thirty minutes after Alex walked out of Chase’s office, Busa walked in.

“How do you feel about sitting in this chair full time?”

It was Chase’s turn to be a silent investor ... for the company that he started.

Outside, the property buzzed in activity. Inside, Sarah and Max sat on the floor of the back house with a half a dozen boxes of his mother’s things.

Miss Abigale had packed what she felt might be of value or help if the day ever came when the police needed more information on how to find Lisa Davis. As the years slipped by, Miss Abigale completely forgot about the boxes and the woman.

Max had walked into the back house expecting some kind of recollection to hit him.

It didn’t.

In the front house, the warmth and smells evoked a feeling one got when they wrapped themselves up in a warm blanket in front of a fire on a cold day. He vaguely remembered the soft hold of the Black woman, but that was all.

Max half expected an equal sense of dread to fill him when he walked into the only home he shared with his mother.

There was nothing.

He and Sarah each took a box and started to sift through them.

“What exactly are we looking for?” Sarah asked.

Max held up a baby blanket and tossed it to the side. “Not this.”

Sarah’s box seemed to be filled with books.

She removed one children’s book after another.

“Maybe she had an address book or a Christmas card list,” Max suggested.

Sarah turned a Dr. Seuss classic over in her hand. “Maybe she kept a diary or journal.”

Max’s box continued to be a wealth of baby and toddler clothing. He realized these were once his but felt completely disconnected from each shirt or pair of socks. “Do women still write in diaries?”

“I did when I was a teenager,” Sarah told him. “About all the cute boys.”

Max grinned. “Were you into the jocks or bad boys?”

“Nerds,” she told him. “The jocks weren’t interested in the redheaded freckled girl that wore glasses and didn’t want to drink every weekend ... and the bad boys were ...” She didn’t finish.

“Were what?” Max tossed a stuffed animal to the side.

“Unpredictable.”

“You don’t strike me as someone ruled by routine.”

“I was in high school. College got me over that. Oh ... this might have something.” Sarah dug out a binder baby book. The place where mothers documented childhood milestones.

She thumbed through the pages and started reading aloud. “‘You were born at three twenty in the morning at Phoenix Memorial. Seven pounds ten ounces.’” She turned the page.

“News to me,” Max said.

“Mother, Lisa Davis . . . Father . . .” Sarah laughed.

“What did she put?”

Sarah turned the book around so he could see it. “Asshole.”

“Seems everyone’s opinion of the man was the same.”

Sarah didn’t comment, just kept flipping pages. “You have Grandma Patty and Grandpa Joe.”

“That’s something. Safe to say their last name is Davis, too.”

A photograph fell out as Sarah turned the page.

She smiled before handing it to him.

It was a baby picture. Max didn’t know how to estimate the age of children, but he must have been pretty new. Swaddled up in a blanket and sleeping, there was a stuffed animal at his side.

Max grabbed the stuffed toy he’d just tossed aside and put it next to the picture.

“Huh.” He sighed. “This is the first time I’ve seen a picture of myself as a baby.”

Sarah looked up from the book. “Do you have any pictures of yourself growing up?”

He shook his head. “Only the ones put in my social services file.”

“Wow. I never thought about that. That sucks.”

Max shrugged. “I suppose.” He put the picture aside. “Anything else in there?”

Sarah shook her head. “Your mother didn’t follow through with any of the suggested entries.”

“She didn’t follow up with raising me either ... so no surprise there.”

Sarah looked like someone just took away her puppy.

Max reached forward, placed a hand on her knee. “It’s okay.”

She placed a hand over his, and they both went back to digging.

It didn’t take long to empty every box.

In the last one, Max found a couple of pictures of his mother.

She was at an art gallery. Likely the one she worked in. She was thin, blonde, and tall. At least with the stilettos.

Arguably beautiful.

“Can I take one of these?” Sarah asked as they looked through the pictures.

“Sure, but why?”

“I might be able to pull a favor and see if we can get an age progression of her.”

“Knock yourself out.” He handed them all to Sarah.

They never found an address book, but they did find a few birthday and Christmas cards that offered names.

Max took in the mess surrounding them with indifference.

“What do you want to do with all this?”

“Goodwill. City dump.”

“You don’t want to keep any of it?”

Max knew what Sarah was doing and appreciated her effort. “None of this holds any meaning to me. These were the remnants of her life, not mine. And it’s okay, Sarah. I’m okay. I’d rather hold on to the memories that I’ve created, not the ones she abandoned.”

Sarah nodded in her resolve and grabbed the folder where they were putting anything that had a name on it. She then reached over and snatched the photographs Max had been looking through. “Fine, but I’m taking these. You were a cute baby.”

They tossed the mess back into the boxes, and Max hauled them to the garbage one at a time and tossed them in.

By the day’s end, Miss Abigale’s yard and entire property had returned to something she was proud of.

Max had pulled Hector aside and commissioned him to return every week to keep it maintained. They negotiated a price, and Max took down a mailing address for Hector and gave the guy his phone number. “If you see something that needs to be done, or Miss Abigale asks for something, give me a price ... keep it fair, and I’ll send you the money.”

Hector was more than happy to have a weekly job and the promise of money coming in.

Miss Abigale sat on her porch, her eyes roaming over her newly manicured yard. “I don’t know how to thank you for making this happen,” she told him.

“It was completely selfish,” Max joked. “I needed the exercise.”

She rolled her eyes, seeing right through him.

Sarah was inside the house, washing some of the grime off before they returned to the hotel.

“You’re a good man, Maxie.” Miss Abigale twisted in her chair and peered through the open door of her house, then turned to him. “How long have the two of you been dating?” she asked quietly.

“Not long.”

“Hmmm, I thought maybe it was new. She’s a sweet girl. Have you met her parents?”

Max shook his head. “No.”

“Well, I like her. The next time you visit, be sure and bring her along.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Miss Abigale turned back around in her chair. “What did you do to the man who gave her that black eye?”

“What I wanted to do and what I did were polar opposites.” Max doubted he’d be held back a second time if it were to happen again.

“Probably for the best,” Miss Abigale said.

“Probably.”

Max leaned against the wooden fence surrounding the porch and drank from the bottle of water he held in his hands.

“You get everything you need from the back house?”

“We did. And threw away what we didn’t need.”

“Good, good. You know, I got to thinking last night after you left, about your mama. Like I told ya, she didn’t have any family come around and only a handful of friends. But I do recall her saying something once about Arkansas.”

Max straightened his spine. “What about Arkansas?”

“She mentioned something about her parents liking Clinton. That he was homegrown. Found it odd since your mama didn’t have an accent. Most people from that part of the Deep South sound like it. You know what I mean?”

Sarah walked out the screen door, let it slap back.

“Do you think that’s where she was from?” Max asked.

“Could be.”

“Where who was from?” Sarah asked.

“Miss Abigale remembered something about my mother and Arkansas.”

Sarah’s eyes lit up. “Where in Arkansas?”

“No idea, child.”

“That’s better than we had two days ago. A few names, a new location.”

Max’s phone vibrated in his back pocket.

He took it out, expecting to see an unrecognizable number, and instead saw Tucker’s name on the screen.

The kid had only texted him since he left Palmdale.

“I need to take this.”

Miss Abigale waved him off.

Max lifted the phone to his ear as he walked down the steps and away from the ladies.

“Hey, Tucker.”

“Hello, Mr. Smith.”

No matter how many times he told Tucker to call him Max, the kid slipped into Mr. more often than not.

“I didn’t realize your generation knew they could make a call on a phone.”

Tucker’s nervous, short laugh was a bad sign. “I thought this needed a call.”

“What’s going on?” Max removed the humor from his voice.

“I, ah ... I just got to your house. You know, after school. And ...”

“And what?”

The boy hesitated again.

The hair on the nape of Max’s neck stood on end.

“Someone broke in, Mr. Smith. That window in the back is smashed, lots of things tossed around.”

It took a moment for Tucker’s words to register. Fuck!

Max ran a hand through his hair and walked farther away from the porch. “Did they take anything?”

“Only a couple of things I can tell. But I didn’t go into all the rooms. The place is a mess. It was fine last night when I left at nine. I stick around after school. It’s been quieter here since the news people left. Easier for me to do my homework.”

“Do you think it happened last night after you left or today?” His gut twisted just thinking about someone ransacking his home.

“I can’t tell. I drove by on my way to school but didn’t come in. I’m sorry.”

“You have nothing to be sorry about, Tucker.” Max looked at his watch. “I’m glad you weren’t there when this went down.”

“Do you want me to call the police?”

Max was already planning their quick exit from Phoenix. “I’ll take care of it. I’ll fly back tonight.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Did you break in?” Max asked.

“No.” Tucker sounded horrified.

“Then stop apologizing. It’s okay. I’m not blaming you. I’m sorry that it happened on your watch. Could have just as easily been when I was there. I’ll let you know when I’m back. I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to hang out there. Someone obviously knows I’m not home.”

“Okay. See you later, then.”

Tucker disconnected the call, and Max called their pilot.

“Hello, Mr. Smith.”

Max skipped the niceties. “How soon can you fly us to Palmdale?”