Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 75592 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75592 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Kat has a lot of people who love her and what do you know… that includes a Mardraggon.
I’d prefer silence between me and Ethan but he has too many questions as I drive to the distillery and I can’t say I blame him. I just dropped some bombshells and this has to be immensely shocking to him.
“Go over again the chain of events and how this occurred,” he says.
“A little over three weeks ago, not long after my dad was removed as chairman of the board, two men showed up at my house. They told me my father had been gambling with their boss… a man named Clinton Rafferty… and he bet a case of our 1921 Shadow Reserve in a high-stakes poker game.”
“And lost,” Ethan says.
“Not only lost, but refused to pay up. So Rafferty sent his goons to try to scare me into giving it up.”
“Scare you how?”
“Threatened me, went and roughed up Lionel—”
Ethan turns in his seat, his words crusted with ice. “And you didn’t think that would put Kat in danger?”
I glance at him briefly before turning my eyes back to the road. “Kat and I weren’t together then.”
“Wait a minute,” Ethan huffs with frustration. “When exactly did you and Kat start seeing each other?”
Hmmm, that’s a difficult question to answer but I might as well spill the entire truth. “Our freshman year at UK.”
“What in the hell?” Ethan exclaims and then rubs the bridge of his nose. “You were… back in college… but she never said anything.”
“Because I wanted to keep it secret.” I let that sink in and Ethan picks up on the regret in my voice.
“And she didn’t. She wanted to be open about it,” he surmises.
“And we broke up because I was an idiot. Caught up now?”
“No, I feel like I’m spiraling down the rabbit hole,” Ethan mutters. “But you reconnected when…” His words trail off and then he curses angrily as he puts it all together. “When I asked her to handle the winery with you. Goddamn it.”
“Yes,” I drawl sarcastically, shooting him a glare. “It’s all your fault.”
“No,” he snarls. “It’s all yours.”
“No,” I snap back at him, refusing to take the full blame. I can have regret, sorrow and anger that this has happened, but I didn’t cause it. “This is Lionel’s fault, but you know what… it’s your fault too. And your parents, and brothers, and Kat’s, and mine, and every other idiot ancestor we have. This stupid fucking feud that’s been egged on by generations of hate and I’m sick of it. It cost me the girl I loved eight years ago and once we get Kat out of there, I’m not going to let it interfere in my life again. So you and your numb-nut brothers need to get on board with the fact that Kat is mine and our families are tied together now, even more than Sylvie bound us.”
I brace for a blast of righteous indignation from the man but he stares out the window and I enjoy the silence.
At the distillery, I enter through the same door I brought Kat through a few days ago, a different security guard meeting us and waving us on. Ethan follows me through the mash house portion of the plant, the sweet, cereal-like aroma washing over me. Ethan eyes the large grain mills and mash tuns where we mill the corn, rye and barley down into grist before mixing it with water. It goes into the tuns to convert the starches into fermentable sugar, and from there, it goes to an annexed building and into huge fermentation tanks.
We don’t go that way though, instead exiting out the back of the mash house and walking across the campus. We pass the distillation units and finally approach the aging plant which houses row upon row of charred oak barrels, stacked ten high on shelves. This building is different from the others in that in addition to requiring a key to get in, it requires a passcode. These barrels are the epicenter of our business and the most valuable part of the plant, so they are protected with the highest security.
I punch in the code and we enter, moving down the center aisle of the long brick building with concrete flooring. At the end is another door with another security panel that requires a different passcode, this one known only to me and my Uncle Terrance. My father used to have it but I changed it the day he was ousted.
I press in the nine digits that unlock the door and glance at Ethan watching with interest. The door opens to an anteroom that has a table with two leather chairs to sit in but what causes Ethan’s eyes to bug out is the massive steel door before him. It’s as large as those used in bank vaults and just as secure. It requires my thumbprint to unlock and then I spin the large wheel to slide the bolt free. I pull the heavy door open and flip on the light.