CHAPTER 2: Tony Wolf

Two weeks earlier…

I pulled the black Land Rover into the gravel parking lot and put the gear into park, but I left the motor running to keep the cold air blowing through the vents in the dash.

My identical twin brother, Terry, was in the passenger seat fiddling with his iPhone.

We were northern boys, hailing from upstate New York. We traveled all over the world, but we weren’t used to this southern Louisiana heat and humidity.

Just getting from the private jet to the Land Rover left me sweating like a pig.

It was like walking in hot soup.

I could feel the sweat pooling under my arms.

My polo shirt was sticking to my back even though the Rover had air-cooled seats.

I tapped my fingers on the steering wheel and glanced sideways at Terry. He slid his Oakley sunglasses down his nose and stared out the windshield at the low-slung block building in front of us.

There were a dozen beat-up cars and trucks lined up in front of the place. A wide metal sign on the roof above the door had two words painted on it in big red letters: “CAJUN FOOD.”

“Catchy name,” Terry said, peering up through the windshield at the sign. “Remind me again what we’re doing in... where the fuck are we?”

I told him again. “Bellegrade, Louisiana.”

“Okay, tell me again what we’re doing in Bellegrade, Louisiana.”

“We are here to meet a guy about an investment opportunity.”

Terry gave me a sideways look. “Are you trying to piss me off?”

I shook my head. “No more than usual.”

“It’s too fucking hot to play twenty questions, Tony,” he said with a long breath. “Just tell me what we’re doing here.”

“We are here to meet with a guy named Bob Beecher, who thinks he has come up with a new way to monitor the deep wells that are drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico so a Deepwater Horizon type of event never happens again.”

Terry frowned at me. He had my same face but could do so much more with it. He scrunched up his nose and gawked at me as if I were speaking French. “Deepwater what?”

I blew out a long breath. “Do you know how hard it is being the smart twin?”

“Do you have any idea how hard it is being the good-looking one?”

We grinned at each other. It was like looking in a mirror.

I said, “Do you remember the BP oil spill in the Gulf a few years back? The Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded and sank and pumped a couple hundred million gallons of crude oil into the Gulf?”

Terry’s face was devoid of recollection.

I sighed and chose more relatable terms.

“Do you remember that movie we watched with Mark Wahlberg and Kurt Russell about the oil rig blowing up?”

“I do.” He smiled and clicked his tongue. “I fucking love Kurt Russell.”

“That was about the Deepwater Horizon.”

“Ah, okay. Why didn’t you just say that without the history lesson?” He waved a hand at me. “Proceed.”

“Some experts believe the blowout could have been prevented if there had been a better way to monitor the pressure of the gas coming from deep in the ocean floor,” I said, repeating what I’d been told to the best of my recollection.

“This guy Beecher claims to have invented a monitoring system that could alert the crews topside of a problem down below before the shit has a chance to hit the fan.”

Terry sighed as he listened. “And why do we care?”

“Because after the disaster, Wolf Energy’s oil refineries took a hell of a hit until the oil market recovered. We lost hundreds of millions of dollars, and I’d rather avoid that in the future if possible.”

Wolf Energy was just one of many companies owned by our family. The parent company, Wolf Worldwide, had been started by our father thirty years ago and was now managed by my better-looking, less-intelligent brother and I as co-CEOs.

Wolf Worldwide had holdings in every industry you could name: energy, telecommunications, manufacturing, farming, wholesaling, retail, entertainment, hospitality, and technology.

There were very few pools we hadn’t dipped our hands into and pulled great wads of cash out of.

Terry, always the skeptical billionaire, said, “Let me guess. He wants us to give him the money to prove the thing works and get it to market.”

“He is looking for investors,” I said. “Since we were on our way to New Orleans to watch the Bears kick the shit out of the Saints, I figured it was at least worth a pit stop. This technology could be worth a fortune.”

He nodded at the bar through the dusty windshield. “So why are we meeting him here? At a diner?”

“Because according to Mr. Beecher, this place is the epicenter of commerce here in Bellegrade,” I said. “Plus, I asked where we could get an ice-cold beer and some real Cajun food. He said this place had the best home-cooked Cajun food in the state. So here we are.”

“Wonderful,” Tony said, rolling his eyes. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t we already worth a fortune? Do we really need to personally chase after stuff like this?”

“We are worth several fortunes,” I said, switching off the Rover because a man I believed to be Bob Beecher had pulled up next to us and was giving me a wave.

I reached for the door handle and bumped Terry’s arm with my elbow. I said, “Just remember our motto.”

We said it together: “You can never have too much money or too much pussy.”

“Amen, my brother,” I said. “Amen.”