I Have Five Kick-Ass Brothers novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Five Brothers, One Swab

Breakfast, a cheek swab and a billionaire in the truck yard who finds out who he is really buying from.

I woke up in a twin bed under a quilt that smelled like cedar and someone else's laundry soap.

The whole night came back, and I lay very still and looked at the ceiling.

There was a framed photograph on the wall across from the bed.

A baby in a yellow knit hat, held up in the air by a laughing man in a baseball cap.

Her crescent birthmark was just visible at the collar.

I had slept in a dead girl's room, and nobody had said so until I was already under the covers.

Hannah had stood in the doorway last night and said, "Don't worry, I dust it every week."

Then she had cried again, and one of the brothers had carried me up the stairs because I was swaying.

There was a knock.

"Breakfast," a voice shouted through the door.

"If you don't come down, the boxer eats your eggs."

"He's not going to eat her eggs," another voice said.

"He will, he's a monster."

"I can hear you both," I called.

There was a pause, and then a delighted whisper.

"She talks."

Downstairs, the kitchen was enormous and loud.

Hannah stood at the stove in an apron, flipping pancakes with the fierce concentration of a woman defusing something.

Dean sat at the head of a long table with a laptop open.

The other four brothers filled the benches on either side.

Hannah put a plate in front of me before I could find the chair.

"Eat," she said.

"I don't know how you like your eggs, so I made them all ways."

There were seven different kinds of eggs.

"They're perfect," I said, and picked the scrambled.

"Scrambled," Hannah said, and wiped her eyes.

"Alexis liked her eggs scrambled. She'd throw them on the floor, but she liked them."

The brother with the fire department sweatshirt leaned across the table and stuck out a hand the size of a skillet.

"I'm the firefighter. That's the surgeon, he's the one who looks sad. That's the boxer, he's the one who hits things. And that's the youngest."

"I'm in grad school," the youngest said proudly.

"He still cries at movies," the boxer said.

"That was one movie."

"It was about a horse."

"It was about a horse and a war, and I'm not a monster."

I laughed out loud.

It surprised me so much that I put my fork down.

At the Winslows' table, nobody laughed unless Janet did first.

The surgeon, who was quieter than the rest, slid a small plastic tube across the table.

"With your permission," he said.

"A cheek swab. Kaitlyn's hairbrush kit isn't enough for me. I'd like it done at my own lab."

I took the swab and rubbed it inside my cheek.

Hannah tapped her spatula on the counter once, and they all went quiet.

I understood then that she ran the house, and that none of five grown men would ever say otherwise.

"She doesn't need any test," Hannah said.

"I knew the minute I saw her."

"We know, Ma," Dean said.

"But the lawyers will want a paper."

"Then we'll get a paper," Hannah said, "and in the meantime, nobody says the word lawyer at my table."

"Yes, ma'am," five voices said.

I was still smiling when a car horn sounded in the yard.

Dean got up, looked out the window, and swore under his breath.

"He's back."

"Who?" I asked.

"The man from Sterne Logistics. He's tried to buy the freight line half a dozen times."

"We turned him down every time," the firefighter said.

"Seven times," the youngest said.

"Seven."

I carried my plate to the sink, because I had no idea what else to do with myself, and I looked out the window.

A black car sat in the yard next to a row of dusty pickups.

A man stepped out of the back seat and buttoned his jacket.

He was tall, with black hair and a dark suit that cost more than every truck in the yard.

I knew him.

I'd last seen him raising a glass to me across a ballroom, while I walked out of my family's life.

Dean went out on the porch with his arms folded.

The rest of the brothers followed.

I came last, in Dean's flannel shirt and a pair of the surgeon's sweatpants rolled four times at the ankle.

The man in the suit looked up at the porch.

His eyes went over the five men, who were glaring at him.

Then they landed on me.

His expression did not change much, but something behind it went very still.

"Miss Winslow," he said.

"It's Kinsella," Dean said.

"It might be," I said, at the same time.

The man's eyes moved from me to Dean to the sign behind him.

KINSELLA FREIGHT.

"I'm Tiernan Sterne," he said.

"Mr. Kinsella, I came here to make you a thirteenth offer for your father's company."

He paused, and I watched him put it together, one piece at a time.

The farmhouse.

The pickups.

The five men who looked nothing like the owners of anything.

"I was told," Tiernan said slowly, "that the family who owned this company wanted to stay anonymous."

"They do," Dean said.

"And you've been writing to us through a shell company."

"I see," Tiernan said.

He didn't look away from me.

"Then I have been trying to buy this company out from under the brothers of a woman I watched drop a necklace into a champagne tower."

The surgeon turned his head and looked at me.

"You threw a necklace in a champagne tower?"

A second car turned off the road behind his, a gray sedan with the Winslow Holdings parking sticker on the windshield.

A man in a gray suit climbed out carrying a leather folio.

He walked straight past Tiernan, up to the porch, and held out an envelope to me.

"Miss Winslow," he said.

"Mrs. Winslow asked me to deliver this personally. It is a very generous offer, and it expires at noon."

I took the envelope.

Inside was a check for three million dollars and a six-page agreement.

On the first page, in bold, were the words CONFIDENTIAL and PERMANENT.

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