Happy Ending (Fisher Brothers 4)

“Jess doesn’t either.”

I shook my head. “I haven’t said a word to Sofia.”

The door opened, and three women walked in wearing too-white smiles that widened when they caught sight of the three of us in the corner. They looked almost identical with their bleached-blond hair, unnatural tans, and matching outfits.

The triplets made their way toward us, despite my silent pleas begging them to stay away. My brothers and I still needed to talk, and unless we went into the office, we couldn’t have any privacy. And there was no way we were leaving the bar unattended.

The women sat down and grabbed three menus from the bar top, perusing them.

“I’ll be with you ladies in a minute.” I gave them a smile and they all nodded so fast, I thought their heads might fall off their shoulders.

I turned toward Frank and Nick again, tightening our huddle and keeping our voices low. “We need to figure out what the hell is going on with that deed. Still no word from the courthouse on any updated ownership?” I looked at Frank, and he shook his head.

“No, but our lawyer says that we can slow down the takeover with a bunch of legalities, considering we truly thought we were purchasing the land and we’ve been paying taxes on it. But that’s all it most likely would be. A stall to buy us more time.”

“More time would be good,” Nick said, his voice hopeful. “I don’t understand how we don’t have any rights if Sam thought he sold us the land, we had a land deed authorized, and we’ve been paying taxes on it. How do we not have a case?”

I nodded. “He makes a good point.”

“There’s a chance we could fight this, but it might ending up taking a really long time. We’d probably have to close the bar while we were in litigation, and winning isn’t a guarantee,” Frank said, sounding defeated.

“More time would be good,” I said. “But I guess not if the bar had to be closed.”

“And if we’re probably going to lose out in the end, what difference does more time make?” Frank held up a hand as both Nick and I opened our mouths to argue the point. “I’m just being realistic. It’s going to buy us more time to do what? If we have to leave Sam’s and open a new bar somewhere, we’re going to have to do that anyway. Why wait? Why waste any more time than we have to?”

My annoyance dwindled immediately. Frank made a fair point. I had no idea what the right thing to do was. “What did the sale paperwork say exactly?”

“It says we own the bar and the back lot in part one of two sales. Part two was the land purchase. It states that the deed filed is not the original, even though it’s been notarized. It wasn’t uncommon for paperwork to go missing from that time period. We did everything by the book, but it doesn’t matter, not if there’s an original signed deed out there.”

“We’re going to actually read this thing, right? I mean, that guy wouldn’t even let me touch it. What if it’s not real?”

“Fuck yes, we’re reading it.” Frank gave me an exasperated look. “We’re not walking away from our business without solid proof.”

I raised my hands in the air in surrender. “Just making sure.”

“Come on, Ryan. We’re not just taking some asshole’s word for it and handing over the keys.”

“I’m just saying . . . I know we’ve all talked about stepping away from the bar more—”

Nick interrupted me. “We just said that we wanted to stop working every night shift, not lose the bar altogether.”

He was right. I was being emotional. The three of us had talked at length about our futures, what we wanted going forward, and what that meant realistically for the business. We all wanted our own families and lives outside of work, but we also wanted to keep the bar.

“And we’ve already started to do that,” Frank said. “We’re here in the days mostly now, and we hired Max to manage the night shifts. It’s been great.”

“Plus, there’s that second location we’ve always talked about opening,” I said, feeling that prickle of excitement whenever we talked about growing the business.

It was something we talked about all the time in the beginning, but our vision changed as our success grew and we met the girls. None of us wanted to have to physically be at each location we opened for it to succeed. At this point, we figured that our name alone would make the business a success, but even

that assumption came with risks.

“Let’s worry about this location first before we even contemplate another,” Frank said, bringing me back to reality.

“Excuse me.” The woman’s voice cut through our pow-wow, and we all turned at the same time. “We know what we want.” She placed the menus down and pushed them away.

I pasted on a smile and approached the smiling group. “Are you sisters?”

They giggled. “No, but we get that a lot.”