Ms. CEO's Baby Daddy Is the Merchant of Death novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Investor's Brother

Russell Mallory offers forty million dollars and a photo of his missing brother, Finn meets his driver properly, and Brooke posts a photo of Yvette and her new "toy" the night before the board meets.

Russell Mallory turned around on my porch with the peonies held out.

"You walked," he said. "In those shoes?"

"My driver had an emergency."

"Then he's a fool." He kissed my cheek. "I'd never let you out of the car."

He was forty-one, silver at the temples, with a warm laugh and very still hands.

He had been courting my company for two months and me for three weeks.

I hadn't decided which one he wanted more.

Finn opened the door in his pajamas before I got my key out.

"Technically you're early," he told Russell.

"Technically I brought you something." Russell crouched and handed him a paper bag.

Inside was a plastic therizinosaurus with long claws.

Finn's mouth fell open.

"Nobody knows that one."

"I know it's your favorite," Russell said, and smiled up at me.

I hadn't told him that.

I put it down to the babysitter, who told everyone everything.

We ate the lasagna my neighbor had dropped off, because I hadn't cooked since Easter.

Russell talked numbers the way some men talk about wine.

Forty million dollars, in two parts.

The first on Monday, if the board kept me in my chair.

"I'm investing in you, Yvette. Not in your cousin."

"Brooke will hate that."

"Brooke hates a lot of things." He refilled my glass. "It's her best quality."

After Finn went to bed, Russell took his phone out and turned it toward me.

A photo of two boys on a pier, one tall and one small and scowling.

"My little brother," he said. "Abram. We have the same mother and different fathers."

I kept my face exactly where it was.

"He's the one on the news," Russell said. "The arms company. The car bomb."

"I saw."

"They say he's in Geneva." He took the phone back and looked at it.

"I don't believe it. Abe hates Switzerland. He says the chocolate's smug."

"You don't know where he is?"

"Nobody does." His jaw worked. "I'm the chief operating officer of his company, and I haven't heard his voice in four months."

He sounded like a man who missed his brother.

I thought about a black pistol on the floor of my car.

I thought about the face that had gone grey through my windshield.

I didn't say a word.

When Russell left, he kissed my hand at the door instead of my cheek.

"Monday," he said. "I'll be in the room."

The next morning at seven-thirty, my black Audi was idling at my curb.

Abe was behind the wheel with two coffees in the cup holders.

I opened the back door for Finn and leaned in the front.

"You left me three houses from home."

"I did."

"That's all?"

"One of those coffees is yours."

Finn climbed into his booster seat and stared at the back of Abe's head.

"You're the man who flew."

"I'm the man who jumped. There's a difference."

"Technically," Finn said, "you were in the air."

Abe turned around in his seat.

He looked at my son for a long moment, the cowlick and the grey eyes, and something in his face hurt to watch.

"Technically," he said, "you're right."

Finn beamed.

"Do you know what a therizinosaurus is?"

"Big claws. Ate plants. Looked scary for nothing."

"How do you know that?"

"I had a little brother who liked dinosaurs."

I sat down in the front seat and didn't look at either of them.

Abe drove Finn to daycare the long way, past a construction site, because Finn asked to see the cranes.

At the gate, Finn hugged me and then, after a second, held out his fist to Abe.

Abe bumped it.

Finn ran inside without looking back.

Abe sat with his hands on the wheel.

"He's a good kid," he said.

"He is."

"Four, you said."

"I did say that."

He pulled out into traffic.

At a red light on Sheridan, he said, "The man on your porch last night."

"Russell Mallory."

"Don't mention me to him."

"Why not?"

"He's the kind of man I owe money to."

It was a good lie.

It came out flat and easy.

I thought about the photo of two boys on a pier.

"How much money?" I asked.

"More than I make driving you."

"Then I'll keep you away from him."

He glanced at me.

"Just like that?"

"I'm a CEO, Mr. Abbott. I keep a lot of things away from a lot of people."

The light turned green.

He almost smiled.

That evening I was on the couch with Finn's feet in my lap when my phone buzzed.

Then it buzzed again, and kept buzzing.

The board chair. My lawyer. Two people from finance.

Brooke had posted a photo.

It was me, getting into the front seat of my car outside the office, with Abe holding the door.

His hand was on the small of my back.

I didn't remember that.

The caption said, "Our CEO's new toy. Board meets Monday at nine. Just saying."

It had four hundred likes.

The board chair's text was one line.

"Be ready to explain this in the room."

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