Handle With Care (Shacking Up 5)

“Nope, I just wanted to call and let you know things are going well, and you don’t have anything to worry about. How’s New York treating you?”

“Eh, I’d rather be where you are, but I’m surviving.”

We chat for a few more minutes, discussing the plans for construction, and I ask about funds and food supplies, but Carlos knows what he’s doing, so he’s on top of everything.

I end the call feeling ambivalent. It’s good to know Carlos has it under control, but I miss being involved in projects that matter.

I focus on the folders on my desk. To the right are the ones I pulled from the filing cabinet in my dad’s office that no one could seem to find a key for. I picked the lock and emptied the entire cabinet into a banker’s box when my mother was out for lunch the other day.

I assume I’m going to find some things in there I shouldn’t, considering how hard it was to get into. I open one of the hidden files. At this point, I’m used to coming across bank records for money spent on things that don’t pertain to anything Moorehead Media-related.

But this time, I find something more inexplicable than usual. My first inclination is to seek out Wren, since typically she’s the one who won’t BS me, but she’s not here, so I can’t ask her.

I take the file with me down the hall to the office I least want to visit, especially after this morning’s meeting, with the person I like less than a pervasive flu virus, but who will potentially have an answer.

I pass Carter, my brother’s assistant, who looks like he wants to stop me, but doesn’t. I enter without knocking. Armstrong flails and shouts, slamming his laptop closed, but not before I get an eyeful of some chick screwing herself with a giant purple dildo in the reflection in the window.

“Seriously?”

“Don’t you know how to knock?” My brother has to tuck himself back in his pants, because, yes, he was jacking off at his desk.

“Don’t you fuck the dog enough at work, now you have to choke your chicken here too?”

“I was releasing some tension after that useless meeting. What do you want?”

I ignore the comment about the meeting, slap the folder on the desk, and flip it open.

“What is that?” Armstrong squints and reaches for the paper, but I pick up the closest pen and rap his knuckles. “Ow! Why’d you do that?”

“Wash your hands, you disgusting prick.”

He rolls his eyes, but washes his hands in the sink by his minibar. Of course there’s a bar in his office, and a putt strip, and a couch. If it wasn’t for the ban on female employees working directly with him, he’d probably have a bed set up in here too.

I wait until he’s rinsed the dick off his hands before I allow him to touch the documents.

“It looks like a deed,” he says.

“I know it’s a deed. What I want to know is, who does the penthouse belong to?”

Armstrong frowns. Or tries to. “How should I know?”

“So it’s not yours?”

“Nope.” He flips his pen between his fingers. “Maybe Dad invested in some property and never got around to doing anything with it.”

“Don’t you find it odd that there’s this deed for a condo unit tucked into his business files?”

He lifts a shoulder. “Maybe he was using it for storage.”

“Storage for what? It’s in Lower Manhattan. It doesn’t make sense.” Obviously my brother won’t be any help. “I’m going to go check this place out.”

“I’ll come with you. Might be good to see what it’s worth, and I need a lunch break.”

“Don’t you have meetings?”

“Nope. I was planning on doing paperwork this afternoon.”

I want to tell him to screw off, but at the same time, if he’s lying about not knowing about the property, I’ll be able to tell once we’re there. Armstrong is a good liar—he always has been—but he has a tic under his right eye that he can’t control when he gets caught embellishing stories. He also does this tapping thing with his foot.

I want to take the subway, but Armstrong balks at the idea of public transit. I’d force him, but I have a feeling he’ll do something embarrassing and end up on social media as a result, which will make more work for Wren that doesn’t have to do with me, so we take a car instead.

We have to stop at three different places for takeout on the way. By the time we finally arrive, I’ve already thought of a hundred ways to murder Armstrong and just as many places to bury his body.

The building is an upscale condo on the water in Lower Manhattan facing New Jersey. It’s not a Mills building either, which is unusual. My father always invests in Mills real estate because they’re the best, and they’re family. It sends up a lot of red flags. I have a few guesses as to why my father would have a piece of property this far away from the office.