Fortune, p.1
Fortune, page 1
Fortune
Steel Brothers: Book Twenty-Six
HELEN HARDT
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Continue reading the Steel Brothers Saga with Book Twenty-Seven
Message from Helen Hardt
Acknowledgments
Also By Helen Hardt
To the woman—I wish I remembered your name—who gave me my first tarot reading at a writers convention fifteen years ago. You said some things I needed to hear, and you sparked my interest in the practice. I’ve never forgotten you!
Prologue
Brendan
Ava is in better spirits after a few hours of baking. She’s helping us in the front now, taking orders, making sandwiches. It’s nearly eleven, so I need to get home, clean up, and get ready to open the bar around noon.
I tap her on the shoulder.
“Yeah?”
“I have to go.”
“Yeah, I’m surprised you stayed this long.” She grabs my hand. “But thanks so much, Brendan. It was great having you here, and we needed the help today.”
“I’m happy to do it.”
“If you need help at the bar tonight, I’m your girl.”
“I might take you up on that. That way we can spend the evening together, even if we’re both working again.”
“I’d love it, to tell you the truth. You can teach me how to mix drinks.”
“Absolutely. Just show up whenever you feel like it.”
“I will.”
I give her a quick kiss on her lips and then I leave the bakery, but first I make sure to remove the apron and hairnet. Enough people saw me looking like that today. I’m not taking that look into public.
I walk a few buildings to my own place, and someone’s waiting for me at the back door.
He looks vaguely familiar, but I can’t place him. He’s average height, nondescript brown hair, dark-blue eyes. Nice enough looking.
“Can I help you?” I ask.
“Yeah. My name’s Pat. Pat Lamone.”
I’ve heard about Pat Lamone. Some of the Steels have mentioned him in passing. Apparently he has a history with the Pike sisters, and it’s not good.
“We’re not opened yet, Pat.”
“I’m not here to have a drink. I need to speak with you.”
“What about?”
“About my grandmother. Her name is Sabrina Smith. That’s the name she goes by, anyway.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say.
“Her real name is Dyane Wingdam.”
“Again, doesn’t ring a bell.”
Another figure approaches us.
“You have got to be kidding me,” I mutter.
It’s Ryan Steel. Ava’s father.
Here, at the bar, with me.
“Ryan,” I say, “what can I do for you?”
“You can let me in.”
“I’m kind of in the middle of something here.”
Ryan glances over at Pat. “I know who you are,” he says.
“Yeah, I know who you are as well, Mr. Steel.”
“So you think you’re a Steel relative?” Ryan says.
“Yeah. That’s what I hear, anyway.”
“Okay,” I say. “Clearly this has nothing to do with me, so if you’ll both excuse me—”
“Actually, this does have something to do with you,” Ryan says. “Could we go inside, please?”
“For God’s sake.” I unlock the door and hold it open. “After you.”
Ryan Steel and Pat Lamone traipse into my bar via the back door.
What the hell could this be about? Pat Lamone, who thinks he is related to the Steels, and Ava’s father. Both here, at my bar, wanting to talk to me.
Pat about his grandmother, who I don’t know from Adam. And Ryan about… Well, I can only guess it has something more to do with those messages Ava and I received.
“All right. I’ve been helping Ava all morning at the bakery, and as you can see, I’m filthy. I need to take a shower so I can open this place by noon.” I glance at the clock on the wall of the bar. “That gives the two of you about three minutes. What the hell do you want?”
Chapter One
Ava
By two o’clock, it’s time to close the bakery. I leave Maya and Luke to clean up. I want to go upstairs, get a shower, and go over to the bar to help Brendan. As soon as I get back to my apartment, though, my gaze falls on the card still sitting on the table.
The tower.
Why haven’t I put it back into the deck?
But I know why.
I’ve been waiting. I’ve been waiting, hoping I could get some kind of positive thought from it.
But nothing has worked.
Not kneading bread this morning.
Hell, not even sex with Brendan last night.
I’m still getting nothing but negative feelings from the damned card.
Mother.
My mother.
I haven’t drawn that card—the empress—but why is my mom at the forefront of my thoughts?
Because the card sometimes can mean illness, and I’m so very afraid she’ll get sick again.
Ill, and about to celebrate her twenty-fifth anniversary.
Plus, she hasn’t gotten back to me with her interpretation of the message. She said she had apps that could help decode it. I certainly don’t have access to the kind of software my private investigator mother has, but I can easily find apps that may help.
I head to the sink, wash the flour off my hands. Then I fire up my laptop and type Darth Morgen.
Nothing I haven’t already seen.
My mother was thinking it might have a code embedded in the letters, with each of the letters standing for a different letter. I could start with R. It appears twice so it would be the same letter.
But what if it’s not?
What if the code isn’t letter per letter but based on something else?
Like perhaps, the letter that precedes it?
God, where to start?
I rise, grab a pad of paper and a pen from a drawer in the kitchen, and come back. I write the letters on the piece of paper.
Darth Morgen.
Then I start playing with them.
What if these letters were rearranged? What if it’s one big word? Or several small words? An anagram?
I play with it for a little while, finding several three-letter words and writing them down, but then I laugh.
“What the hell are you doing?” I say out loud. “If you’re looking for anagrams, find an anagram maker online.”
I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before. I was so overwhelmed with my developing feelings for Brendan and with the cards that were telling me all kinds of horrible things. Plus, I was depending on my mother. My ex-cop private-investigator mother who said she could decipher it.
But she kept putting me off.
I do a quick search, and I come up with something called Dante’s Anagram Maker.
Good enough. I type in all the letters of Darth Morgen.
I close my eyes.
I’m not sure why, except something tells me that if I look, I’ll be faced with even more of a mystery.
So I sit for a moment, eyes closed, and I inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.
I’m still waiting for some kind of positive feeling about the tower card still sitting on the table.
If I can get something—anything—that isn’t a negative feeling…
Then I can open my eyes.
And I can begin to solve the mystery of Darth Morgen.
So I wait.
I continue breathing.
But it doesn’t work.
Nothing works.
I open my eyes, and I glance at the screen.
And the word I see fills me with hope.
It’s not my mother.
My mother’s not ill. I feel that, and I know it in my heart, and I breathe a sigh of relief.
Because the first word on the list of anagrams for Darth Morgen is…
Grandmother.
G randmother?
I wrinkle my forehead as I stare at the word.
I never knew my paternal grandmother. She died before I was born.
My maternal grandmother died when I was a little girl, but I do remember her. She had the worn and wrinkled face of a woman who was once a classic beauty before hardships had taken their toll. Diamond Lee Thornbush, who named her only daughter Ruby. My mother used to make fun of her mother’s—and her own—gemstone name, but I always thought they were pretty.
Grandma Didi—what Gina and I called her—used to read to us in that raspy voice of hers. It wasn’t until later that I learned her voice was the result of decades of smoking. She eventually quit, but the damage was done. She succumbed to lung cancer.
She gave me the pink silk scarf with the daisy pattern that I use to wrap my tarot deck. I glance at it on the side of the table. It helps me feel close to the feminine energy of my ancestors.
My ancestors on my mother’s side, that is. But my other grandmother? Daphne Steel?
I never knew her, so it’s impossible to feel any energy from her. Perhaps if I had more information about her, I could feel something, but my father doesn’t talk about her, and neither do my aunts and uncles. At least not to me.
Dale, Donny, and Henry were all alive when she died, and so was Brad, although he was only a few months old. None of them ever met Daphne Steel, though. She was in the hospital, a mental health facility. She had broken away from reality years before.
Again…that’s all I know. That’s all any of us know.
It’s odd, really. Mental illness. I’ve never understood it, which I suppose is a good thing. Like I said, my father doesn’t talk about it. None of them do, but it must’ve gone through their minds at some point. Might they inherit the mental illness from which their mother suffered?
None of them have, thank goodness. Perhaps what she suffered from wasn’t genetic.
I should ask Aunt Melanie. She’s a retired psychiatrist and therapist, but already I know she won’t go into any detail with me.
Daphne Steel is not someone our family talks about. Funny that it never occurred to me to wonder why.
She is my grandmother. She and Diamond Thornbush.
This message must be referring to one of them. Except that Brendan and his family got the same message.
An anvil settles in my gut.
This can’t possibly mean…
I shake my head vehemently.
No. No way. We’re not related to the Murphys. Not at all. The idea forces nausea up my throat. Brendan and I…
No.
Just no.
The message must have some different meaning. Or it refers to a person other than a grandmother.
I scan the list of words the anagram maker came up with, narrowing my eyes.
grandmother
arm thronged
armed throng
Darth monger
grander moth
grander Thom
mar thronged
marred thong
month regard
I stop. The list goes on for what seems like forever.
Most of the anagrams make no sense at all, but I can’t help a slight giggle at marred thong. Grander moth? No. Darth Monger? Possibly a Star Wars reference. I could ask Dave, but already I know I won’t.
It’s got to mean grandmother.
When I saw the word, a feeling of relief settled in me—a relief that my own mother isn’t ill. That was my fear—that Mom and Dad were acting strangely, keeping me at arm’s distance, because Mom’s breast cancer had recurred.
That fear dissipated instantly when I saw the word grandmother. My mom isn’t ill. This message refers to a grandmother, and not my mother.
My grandmother?
Or Brendan’s?
Or someone else’s?
I know for a fact that both my grandmothers are dead, so it can’t refer to my grandmother.
Or…perhaps is alive, as part of the message, is also part of the anagram.
I return to the anagram maker program and type in Darth Morgen is alive.
Again, hundreds of results.
The first is alderamin oversight.
I have no idea what alderamin means, and when I search the term, I find it’s the name of the brightest star in the constellation Cepheus and an anime series.
No. My gut again. It’s telling me that is alive means what it says. Darth Morgen is the puzzle…and I figured it out.
It’s grandmother.
But whose grandmother? Both of mine have been dead and buried for years. Decades, in the case of Daphne Steel.
What can it possibly mean?
And what does it mean in relationship to the tower card that I drew, which left me with goose bumps of fear dashing over me?
My mother isn’t ill.
My grandmothers are dead.
I assume Brendan’s are as well.
So what does this mean? And why did Brendan and his father get the same message?
I don’t know.
But with everything that’s going on? With my family keeping things from me and the rest of the cousins, and with the cards I’ve drawn…
I’m frightened.
Very, very frightened.
Chapter Two
Brendan
“I’d prefer to speak to you alone,” Ryan says.
“So would I,” Pat agrees.
“Fine. That gives you a minute and a half each.” I shrug. “Which one of you wants to go first?”
“Since you’re dating my daughter, I’m going first.” Ryan walks to the other side of the bar.
“You got a problem with that?” I say to Pat.
“I suppose not. Would it matter if I did?”
“I don’t fucking care what either of you has to talk to me about. Stay here. I’ll be back in a minute and a half.” I follow Ryan to where he has settled himself at a table near the pool tables in the back of the bar.
He sits, his hands clasped in front of him. I take the seat across from him, and he meets my gaze. His light-brown eyes seem troubled. I’ve seen the look. Every bartender has. Eyes slightly narrowed, a gaze that seems unfocused. It’s the classic look of someone who’s distressed about something. Could be anything. I’ve heard it all from across the bar. But Ryan Steel isn’t troubled because of a work conflict, a bill he can’t pay—he’s a Steel after all—or a doomed relationship.
“Spill it,” I say. “You’re down to a minute and fifteen seconds. And if this is about your mandate that I take you to my safe-deposit box in Grand Junction for those documents, it’s not happening. I don’t take orders from anyone. Not even Ryan Steel.”
In truth, the documents were in a safe at my parents’ house, but I brought them to my place after Thanksgiving dinner. I lied to Ryan yesterday, but he’s still not getting them. I expect an argument, especially since I laced the last part with sarcasm, so I brace myself.
“It’s not about that.”
No argument? Color me surprised.
“Good.” I check my watch. “A minute and ten seconds.”
“You may want to give me more time than that.”
“I’ve got somebody else waiting to see me, and—”
“That guy waiting to see you is…” Ryan rubs a hand over his forehead, his knuckles white. “Fuck, this is so fucked up.”
Tell me something I don’t know.
I massage my temple. “Is it? Maybe you ought to tell me what’s going on first, and I’ll make my own assessment.”
Ryan shakes his head, raking his fingers through his gray-speckled brown hair.
Ava doesn’t look a lot like him. She looks more like her mother. But in his distressed expression, I see Ava. I see the same look Ava had as she was looking at those tarot cards after doing the reading for both of us.
