The Price Of Scandal(107)

I felt her stiffen under my arm and stepped between them. “You’ve handled enough today,” I told her. “Let me take this one.”

Emily’s gaze slid over me to her brother and then back to me.

“He’s all yours,” she said. “Jane? Help me load up?”

“But, but, but. Stun gun.” Jane pouted.

Emily slung her arm around her friend. “What’s more satisfying, making my brother piss his pants with a stun gun or watching Tea and Crumpets do it with scary faces?”

Jane heaved a sigh. They took the boxes of Emily’s corporate life and headed for the Range Rover outside.

“Emily! You gotta talk to me,” Trey yelled.

Then the idiot made the mistake of trying to go after her.

“Let’s you and I have a chat,” I said, grabbing him by the back of the neck like a pup. He was still wearing his sunglasses indoors, and that made me even angrier.

“Get off me, man. I need to talk to my sister!” He tried to shrug out of my grip, so I squeezed harder. I didn’t get to deck Lita. But Trey was a different story.

“Your sister is busy.”

I steered him toward the building security manager’s office. It was a small room with two desks, a sagging bookcase full of binders, and two shabby visitors’ chairs. I pushed him down into one.

“Where’s Lita going? What’s going on?” he asked, trying to get back up. I pushed him down again and sat on the corner of one of the desks.

“That’s really none of your concern anymore.”

He scrubbed his hands over his face and through his $300 haircut. “Look, just tell me what’s going on.”

“You conspired with Lita Smith to steal and sell Flawless’s scar treatment formula because your sister wouldn’t bail you out.”

Trey blinked. “That’s not how it went down.”

“You worked with Lita to destroy Emily’s reputation, to get her fired.”

Surly now, he kicked back in the chair. “She needed to be taught a lesson. Family first.”

“How do you put your family first, Trey?”

He smirked, and I couldn’t help myself. I snatched the sunglasses off his face and hurled them against the wall.

“Jesus, man! Those cost four grand!”

“Real men don’t wear sunglasses indoors, and they don’t make other people buy them for them, you stupid sod.”

“What’s your problem?”

“You, you festering moron. What’s your family contribution, Trey? What do you give back to your parents, your sister? No wait, let me guess,” I insisted when he opened his stupid mouth. “Your familial contribution is requiring them to clean up your messes, you pathetic pissant.”

He rolled his eyes. “I’m the kid, the baby of the family.”

“You’re thirty-three years old. You stopped being a ‘kid’ fifteen years ago. Legally, at least. Mentally and emotionally, you appear to be about four.”

“Dude. What the hell? You can’t talk to me this way.”

“You set your sister up.” I gripped the lip of the desk so I wouldn’t choke the living shit out him.

“This again. She fucking deserved it. So high and mighty about her money and her work. Jesus. You’d think she was curing cancer or something.”

“Actually, she’s working on heart disease, not that you’d give a damn, you worthless little shit.”

“Dude. Can we not with the insults?”

“Dude. You’re lucky your sister didn’t give me permission to destroy your face,” I shot back.

“Look, man. I’ll clear it up with her. It was a misunderstanding. Just lemme talk to her.”

“You don’t get it, do you?” I asked.

“Get what?” he asked, exasperated.

“You blew it. That was your last interaction with your sister. Ever. There’s no coming back from what you did.”

“So she lost her job. Lita’s gonna give me a title and some pull. Maybe I’ll make a position for Em after she apologizes.”

I laughed. The unbridled idiocy of this moron was making me crazy.

“Have you ever had any IQ tests? Taken your SATs?” I asked.

“My tutor took the SATs for me. My time isn’t best spent in some classroom.” Trey snorted.

“I can see that.” He was a fucking git, and it was all Venice Stanton’s fault. “Let me spell it out for you. You tried to take away the thing that mattered most to Emily. And now you’ll never see her again.”

“What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?”

“I wonder how your father will feel? He’s the one who holds the purse strings, isn’t he? He wasn’t too keen on helping you out of this jam before. How’s he going to feel when he finds out you tried to sabotage Flawless? Your sister’s company. He’s on the board of directors here. He’s got a vested interest. So really, you screwed him over, too.”

“Look, it’s not that big of a deal,” Trey insisted. “Emily was being a bitch. Lita and I taught her a little lesson. Whatever.”

“Now it’s my turn to teach you a little lesson,” I said amiably. “You saw Lita leaving?”