Accidentally Wild (The Wilder Brothers)

“What if it’s foul play?” I asked.

I turned an

d looked at my brother as he drew in a deep breath.

“What if someone is trying to sabotage us?”

“Then it brings up a whole other line of questions. Who? Why? Things like that. I mean, we’re in the business of designing homes. Not pissing people off,” Lucas said.

“But what are we gonna tell Mom and Dad? I think we all forget sometimes that their loan came with a ten percent chunk of our business. They’re technically a set of hands in all this. And we didn’t tell them about this mansion.”

“I think I’ve got an answer to that.”

The two of us turned around and watched as Cash approached. Everyone else was still standing there with their jaws swinging on the concrete, but big brother stepped up to the plate.

“We’ll have to be honest. Tell them that we wanted to buy the mansion, flip it, and make a quick profit we would've used to buy out their portion of the company because we want to be on our own. Out from underneath them. Which is something that’s gonna rile up Mom and Dad because this has always been a family business, right?” Cash asked.

“Okay? How does that get us out of the woods?” I asked.

“It doesn’t. But it keeps us honest. Mom and Dad are going to have lectures and we’re going to have to suck that up. But lying to them isn’t going to get us anywhere. We tell them that we’re ready to branch out from underneath them and they’ll toss it in our face in the most loving way possible. Then, we stick to our guns.”

“Some plan,” I murmured.

“He’s right. We’ve made enough mistakes,” Lucas said.

“You mean I’ve made enough mistakes,” I corrected.

“No. Just because you didn’t take out insurance on this place doesn't mean you’re the only one taking the fall. We run this company as brothers, so we take the fall as brothers. As far as we’re concerned, all of us blanked on taking out insurance in favor of the excitement of our first purchased property,” Cash said.

“And there’s the lie,” Lucas said.

“Not a lie. We were excited. We kept it from Mom and Dad. We overlooked a step in our excitement, and now we’re paying the price. That’s exactly what’s happened,” Cash said.

“Coming to our rescue as always,” I said.

“I’ve had to bail you assholes out my entire life. This ain’t no different,” Cash said.

Everyone else gathered around us as we turned back to the towering inferno. The entire damn city would know this fucking mansion burned down, and because of the party they’d know exactly who to trace it back to. If Mom and Dad didn’t already know about it, they’d hear about it by morning.

“So, when are we going to tell them?” I asked. All of us looked around at everyone else before I shook my head.

I guess we’d figure that part out later.

TWO

Andrea

“You said you met where now?” I asked as I took a swig of my sweet tea. I loved this little café, had some of the best tea on this side of town.

Jessica looked away from the table towards the windows. I could see the park through them, but that’s not where my focus was. It was on her. Her and this new guy I hadn’t even met yet. “Well, we first met when he stumbled into the tavern with a stab wound in his gut.”

“Excuse me?” I asked setting my drink down.

“Yeah. It was pretty intense, honestly. He hurt himself on the job and didn’t have his cell phone with him.”

“He was on the job at one in the morning?”

“He designs homes. He and his brothers were fixing up a house down the street from the tavern and he fell onto a window. It shattered, pierced him, and he stumbled into the tavern I guess to use the phone. But he didn’t quite get there.”