The Angels' Share (The Bourbon Kings #2) - J. R. Ward Page 0,3

couldn’t even imagine, and yet Miss Aurora had more than endured, triumphing in culinary school, running the gourmet kitchen at Easterly not just like a French chef, but better—while also mothering him and his brothers and sister as no one else had, becoming the soul of Easterly, the touchstone for so many.

The beacon that, until he had met his Lizzie, had been the only light on the horizon for him.

Lane wished he believed as his momma did. And oh, God, Miss Aurora even had faith in him, faith that he would turn this all around, save the family, be the man she knew he could be.

Be the man his father was not and never had been, no matter the trappings of his wealth and success.

Jump, he could just jump. And it was over.

Was that what his father had thought? With the lies and the embezzlement being exposed, with Rosalinda’s death a harbinger for the dirge of discovery, had William come here because he alone knew the true extent of what he had done and the depth of the hole that had to be dug out? Had he recognized that the game was up, his time was coming, and even with all his financial acumen, he wasn’t going to be able to solve the problem he’d created?

Or had he decided to fake his own death—and failed by succeeding?

Was somewhere, out there, perhaps in an offshore account or in a bank vault in Switzerland, under his name or another’s, everything that had been siphoned off?

So many questions. And the lack of answers, coupled with the stress of having to fix it all, was the kind of thing that could drive you insane.

Lane refocused on the waters. He could barely see them from this height. In fact … he could see nothing but blackness with the merest hint of a shimmer.

There was, he realized, a certain siren call to the coward’s way out, a pull, like gravity, to an end that he could control: One hard impact and it was all over and done with, the deaths, the deceit, the debt. Everything wiped clean, the festering infection that was going to hold no longer and was about to be unleashed publicly nothing to worry about anymore.

Had there been sleepless nights for his father? Regrets? When William had stood here, had there been a to-and-fro about should he/shouldn’t he fly for a few moments and be done with the terrible mess he had created? Had the man even once considered the ramifications of his actions, an over two-hundred-year-old fortune wiped out not even in a generation, but in a matter of a year or two?

Wind whistled in Lane’s ears, that siren call.

Edward, his older, formerly perfect brother, was not going to clean all this up. Gin, his only sister, was incapable of thinking about anything other than herself. Maxwell, his other brother, had been MIA for three years now.

His mother was bedbound and drug-addled.

So everything was in the hands of a poker-playing, former man-whore with no financial, managerial, or relevant practical experience.

All he had, at long last, was the love of a good woman.

But in this horrible reality … even that wasn’t going to help him.

Toyota trucks were not supposed to go seventy-five miles an hour. Especially when they were ten years old.

At least the driver was wide awake, even though it was four a.m.

Lizzie King had a death grip on the steering wheel, and her foot on the accelerator was actually catching floor as she headed for a rise in the highway.

She had woken up in her bed at her farmhouse alone. Ordinarily, that would have been the status quo, but not anymore, not now that Lane was back in her life. The wealthy playboy and the estate’s gardener had finally gotten their act together, love bonding two unlikelies closer and stronger than the molecules of a diamond.

And she was going to stand by him, no matter what the future held.

After all, it was so much easier to give up extraordinary wealth when you had never known it, never aspired to it—and especially when you had seen behind its glittering curtain to the sad, desolate desert on the far side of the glamour and prestige.

God, the stress Lane was under.

And so out of bed she had gotten. Down the creaking stairs she had gone. And all around her little house’s first floor she had wandered.

When Lizzie had looked outside, she’d discovered his car was missing, the Porsche he drove and parked beside the