Release!: A Walker Brothers Novel (The Walker Brothers #1)(23)

“I think you should scrap the job at one of the resorts and go to culinary school. It’s obviously your passion. You should pursue it as a career,” Trace mused, his expression watchful.

“I can’t. I need this job, Trace.” Cooking was my passion, but I was a realist. I needed to work to survive.

“I can help you get what you should have had, Eva. I want to.”

I shook my head. “No. You’ve helped me enough.”

“Nothing I do will ever be enough to undo the past.”

“It’s not your responsibility to try to make it better,” I told him calmly.

“I’m your stepbrother,” he argued.

A chuckle escaped my lips. If he was playing the “you’re my family” card, I knew he was desperate. He usually chose not to acknowledge that he was related to me by marriage.

Probably because he’d just screwed me the night before.

“What? I am your family,” he said stubbornly.

“We have no connection, Trace, and you know it. You don’t owe me anything, and even if you did, you’ve done me a huge favor by giving me work.”

The fact that my mother married his father meant absolutely nothing. He hadn’t even known my mother, so it wasn’t like he could claim a connection through her.

“I’m not offering because of our connection. I want to do it because you have a real talent, Eva. You should be able to do what you want to do.”

“Did you?” I asked hesitantly. Trace had been young when his father had died, way too young to take on the responsibilities of the world the way he did now.

He shrugged. “Mostly. I always knew I’d take Dad’s place someday. Sebastian wasn’t interested in business, and Dane’s an amazing artist. I don’t think either one of them had any desire to be Dad’s successor.”

“You never wanted something different?”

“I wanted things to work out differently. I wanted Dad with me a hell of a lot longer than he stayed alive. And I wanted Dane to never have experienced the pain he did. I wanted some time to get my MBA and work a little more on perfecting my mixed martial arts skills. I competed in college a little, but I wanted…more.”

“You do MMA?” Okay, I was surprised, but maybe I shouldn’t have been. The guy moved lightning fast, and it was evident that he worked out.

“Only as a hobby.”

“Did you finish your master’s degree?”

“Of course. It took me a while because I was filling Dad’s role in the company, but I finished.”

Of course you did!

Was there anything Trace Walker couldn’t do?

Obviously, the one thing he couldn’t accomplish was managing his brothers’ lives.

“So your brothers aren’t part of the company now?” I was curious.

“No. It’s just me. I bought them out because they didn’t want the same things. Both of them are incredibly wealthy men, but they aren’t in the Walker conglomerate anymore. It’s not what they wanted.”

“What do they want?” What do you want?

“I think they’re pretty much doing what they want,” Trace said sarcastically. “Sebastian does as little as possible when it involves work, and Dane lives outside of society on a private island. His work is in demand, but he doesn’t make personal appearances.”

“Are his injuries that bad?” I wondered what had made Dane separate himself completely.

“I don’t know. He’s my brother. I’ve never looked at him as anything except my family. I guess I don’t notice any of his scars anymore.”

“You’re worried,” I observed.

“Yes.” Trace sounded reluctant to admit his concern.

“You’re not responsible for their current situations, any more than you’re guilty of the plane crashing.” Trace was shouldering the burden of his siblings’ wellbeing, and he needed to let go. His brothers were adults, and needed to find their own ways.

“I’m their older brother,” he argued gruffly.

“Exactly. You’re not their father.” He needed to understand that even though he had taken on his father’s role in the company, his brothers were never going to see him as anything other than their oldest sibling. In fact, they might end up resenting him for trying to fix them.


I could easily see all of these issues because I was an outsider. I know that, for Trace, letting go was a struggle. He tried to act like he didn’t care, but he cared very much. Maybe too much. Easy for me to say, I guess, considering I had nobody. But my heart ached for the suffering this family had been through. And judging by what little Trace had shared, the family was still broken.

We were silent for a few minutes, Trace looking like he was lost in thought. I finished my coffee and sat the mug carefully on the end table next to my chair. He finished his moments later, and placed his used cup on the coffee table in front of him.

“Britney is definitely my fault,” he confessed with a stoic expression. “She went after Dane specifically because I dumped her.”

“She’s a poisonous snake,” I grumbled. “And it’s not your fault she sought Dane out. That’s all on her.”

It made my stomach roll to think that a woman could prey on a man who was as vulnerable as Dane.