TRISTAN DIDN’T WANT to be in the office and working. Not because it was Saturday, but because he wanted to be with Victoria. Exploring what they had. Figuring out what came next. Planning a family.

There was that word again. That thing he’d wanted for so long, that always seemed just out of his grasp. Family. It had been so close this time, and now, gone again.

Mischa was right that he was being a little melodramatic. But right now, with solutions universes away, it was hard to see the alternative.

He was going to use what Ash told him, and figure out how to get out of this. He didn’t have any idea, but it would be more than just paying him back early for a loan he thought he could foreclose on, then donating one of those buildings to spit him.

This would be the same hard core fucking retaliation the man tried to point at Tristan.

Except he still didn’t know how it helped.

Tristan grunted in frustration and raked his fingers through his hair. He’d been staring at numbers and documents and contracts so long, his eyes felt like they were going to fall out of his head.

He needed a break from all of this. And to talk. Not to Mischa. Tristan was still upset about that conversation, and annoyed at the part of him that said he was in the wrong.

Tristan needed a casual, normal conversation, with someone who wouldn’t pick apart his every word. He grabbed his phone and dialed his sister.

“Hello.” Trina sounded happy when she answered.

Perfect. “Hey, stranger. You busy?”

“Nope. What’s up?”

“I, um, I’m not sure how to put this.” What was he doing? This wasn’t what he called for. He was about to spill the news about the baby. How stupid was that? Except fuck if he wasn’t itching to tell someone who would be as happy about it as he was.

“What’s going on? Are you all right? Are Mom and Dad all right?” The concern in her voice crept toward panic.

He laughed. At least melodramatic ran in the family. “Everyone’s fine. You’re going to be an aunt.”

“That’s awesome. How?”

“Please don’t make me explain to you where babies come from. Not a second time.” Talk about awkward conversations. Telling his little sister where babies came from, because she refused to ask Mom and Dad.

Her giggle was pleasant. “I mean, I didn’t know you were seeing anyone.”

“I wasn’t. It was...” He wasn’t prepared to get into this kind of detail. “It’s a long story. Some day we’ll sit and have coffee and maybe I’ll tell you the whole thing.”

“Okay. Who’s the mother? Does she know?” Trina teased.

Yup. This was exactly the conversation he needed. “You’re in top smartass form today. Her name is Victoria Small. I don’t think you’ve ever met her.”

“As in, Vicky Next Door? Wasn’t she dating Mischa?”

Of course she knew how Vicky was. Tristan should have thought of that. Every girl Trina’s age watched that show. “Years ago.” He winced as his irritation slipped out.

“Okay. Well, Congratulations. When’s the baby due? I want to be there. So amazing.”

“Can you get the time off work?” Tristan asked. Maybe he shouldn’t have made this call. He didn’t know how to tell her seeing the baby right away might not be an option. Because discovery and criminal investigation.

“I don’t think that’ll be an issue.” Trina sounded odd.

“Why do you sound like that?”

“I lost my job.”

“What? Why?” He’d wanted a distraction, but not this. Trina was the best at her job. Okay, so he was a little biased, but she was a damn good IT person anyway.

“They said I was too friendly with a client during the Ride & Surf install. Said I was fraternizing.”

They fired her for dating someone who worked for one of their clients? That seemed a bit severe. “Bullshit. I’ll put you in touch with an employment attorney. Don’t worry about the cost, I’ve got you covered. They can’t fire you for that.”

She sighed. “They can if it’s true.”

“So you hooked up with someone on Spencer’s staff? Who the fuck cares as long as they don’t have an impact on your work?” He let his indignation and irritation with unreasonable people flow, directing it at her situation.

“That’s not quite what happened.” And there was that catch in her voice again.

“I don’t understand.”

“And I don’t know why not. You’re usually more observant than that,” she teased. “It wasn’t just someone on his staff. I was sleeping with the boss.”

“I... Oh.” The boss was Spencer. Did she say sleeping with? She was fucking his friend? “Oh, fuck. You’re a third his age.” Not the most intelligent thing he could have said.

“Thanks for the math help, Pythagoras. It doesn’t matter, because we broke up. Besides, last time I checked, Victoria Small was the same age as me.”

Breaking up didn’t make it better. Spencer screwed his sister, and then dumped her? “But she’s—”

“She’s what?” Trina sounded irritated. “More mature than me? You’re a better guy than Spencer?”

“I’m trying to look out for you. There are things you don’t know about Spencer.”

“Like what? Because he and I talked a lot when we were together, and I’d guess there are things you don’t know about him, either.”

Apparently there were things Tristan had missed about both of his friends. First the argument with Mischa and now this. “He’s not good enough for you.” The protest tasted weak.

“First of all, fuck you. You don’t get to say who I do and don’t date. Second, he’s your best friend. He’s been by your side since you were children, and he never betrayed you. Did he?”

“No, but—”

“But what? Tell me what this big secret is that I don’t know, that could crush me, if he and I were to stay together.”

“It’s not as though there’s any one thing.” Tristan was kind of a crappy friend.

“How about this. If you don’t think he’s good enough, you’ll never approve of anyone.

That was true. No one was good enough for his sister. Except... “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

He wrapped up the call with Trina, making sure she was doing all right, but he couldn’t shake the conversation out of his head. The moment he disconnected, he dialed Spencer.

“Yeah.” Spencer’s tone was flat.

“Am I a shitty friend?”

Spencer gave a short laugh, then paused. “Wow. You’re serious.”

Okay, so that was a bad sigh. “Yes.”

“Are you drunk?” Spencer asked.

Not funny. “It’s two in the afternoon.”

“And? It’s the weekend. Maybe you’ve loosened up over time.”

“Forget it.” Tristan moved to disconnect.

“No.” The edge in Spencer’s voice stopped him. “You don’t call and ask a question like that, then hang up. Unless you’re ten.”

“Did I ever do that when I was ten?”

“If you had, we wouldn’t be having this conversation now. Or maybe we would have, because I wouldn’t have told you back then.”

The meaning sank in, and Tristan slumped back in his chair. “So, short answer is yes?”

“When was the last time we talked?” Spencer asked.

Odd question. “When you closed on the building. Early January.”

“Like actually talked. You were so involved in your own world when you were here, you didn’t even notice—”

Tristan mentally groaned, as more pieces clicked. Showing up at Trina’s on New Year’s Eve. That dress. Spencer being there. “That you were fucking my sister.”

“Not then I wasn’t. So you did notice.”

“No. She told me. I can’t believe I didn’t see that.” Like he never stopped to consider Mischa’s side of things. How involved was he in his own world?

Spencer made a clucking noise. “I’m not going to say shitty, I’m going with driven.”

“Cause versus effect.”

“Basically,” Spencer said. “What brought this on?”

Tristan gave him a brief rundown of the argument with Mischa.

“I always wondered if you two would break up.”

“Ha.” Tristan didn’t want to be amused by the jab, but it was better than wallowing. “Seriously though, I’m sorry if I’ve been a shit.”

“Eh. I got over it.” Spencer sounded sincere. “You should probably kiss and make up with your boyfriend though.”

“Still not funny.” Tristan didn’t mind the jab, though.

Spencer laughed. “It’ll always be funny.” There was a pause. “Wait. Did you say Wolfram? Like Ralph Wolfram? The investor?”

“That’s him.” Tristan tucked revelations aside. He’d apologize to Mischa soon, but Spencer’s question had his attention.

“I talked to him a couple of years ago,” Spencer said.

“You never mentioned that.” Though, given what they’d just discussed, Tristan wasn’t surprised.

“The guy was an asshole. Oozed slime. Besides the gut feeling, though, he had some actual bad data in his background. If I’d had any idea Mischa was signing with him, I would’ve warned you.”

Too late for that. “Bad data like what?”

“Everything looked like it was square on the surface, but when I dug deeper, things stopped adding up. Dates didn’t match. Dollar figures were off. Nothing to trigger red flags in an automated system. Everything was within reasonable tolerances, but it also followed a pattern.”

Which all matched up with what Ash had said, and tied back to what Ralph mentioned with the mismatched dates on the donations.

“I should mention, I’m not supposed to tell you any of this,” Spencer said. “I signed an NDA. I didn’t have enough access to his records to track down proof, but it was enough circumstantial for me to tell him no thanks.”

“Sounds familiar.” Tristan’s mind whirred over the information. It wasn’t new, but it made some pieces click differently. It formed a new angle on the situation. “How are you liking the new building?” The shift to small talk would let his brain process while they chatted.

“It’s good.”

“How’s Trina?”

There was a pause before Spencer said, “Brilliant at her job. She’s got a long career ahead of her in her industry.”

Tristan should still be upset at the hook-up, but Trina made some good points. Just like Mischa had. “You remember I said I already talked to her.”

“Then you probably know more than I do.” Spencer’s tone had cooled.

“I’m sorry it didn’t work out.” Did he mean that? Yeah, he did. He wanted the best for his sister, and Spencer had always been a good friend and person.

“You’re serious?”

Tristan rolled his eyes. “You keep saying that. Have you ever known me to be anything else? But yes. If it had worked out, the two of you would’ve been good together.”

“Despite the age difference and the what will people say factor?”

“Yes. And I swear to God if you say you’re serious one more time...”

Spencer chuckled. “In that case, thanks. Not that I think she has to ask you, but it’s nice to know if it had happened, she wouldn’t have to cut you out of your life.”

Tristan was grateful for that too. The thought was jarring. He’d thought for so long that he knew what family and friendship were, and the last month had turned his perception on its head. In a good way.

As he hung up, Spencer’s comment about what will people say kept bouncing in his head. That notion had driven Tristan for so long. Even as a kid. Sure, he boarded because he loved the sport, and he wanted to be the best, but would he have pushed after that silver, if it weren’t for his coach’s disappointment? Would he have taken himself out of the spot entirely, injuring his leg?

So many what if’s, and he couldn’t dwell on those. What he could do was make sure he didn’t add to the list.

He pulled out the information Ralph had sent him, along with all the documentation Tristan had about the donation. Not just the final sale, but every time money or contracts changed hands.

He’d looked at it all before, but Ash’s and Spencer’s revelations had shifted his perspective.

A photocopy of a check caught his attention. Maybe he hadn’t looked at it all before. It was the check that Mischa handed over, to pay off the loan. It was dated December first.

Tristan frowned. That wasn’t right. They’d finalized the deal in November. Why didn’t he notice that before?

Because there was no reason to dig that deep on details. The check had been drawn from the firm’s account, to avoid one more complication of funds transfers. He logged into the online banking, and opened their digital copy of the payment.

It matched what Wolfram had sent.

“No, no, no.” He spoke to the empty room. Not possible. He wasn’t remembering wrong by an entire month. Not something so recent, with so many moving parts.

He turned to the file cabinet with printouts of last year’s records. Mischa had teased him about keeping photocopies of everything, especially checks that were going to be digitally tracked.

Tristan did it anyway. And there it was. The scan he’d done of the payment, before they handed it to Wolfram. It was dated November first. Just like be remembered, and contrary to the documents in front of him.

That couldn’t be right. It would mean Wolfram wasn’t just exploiting a handful of loopholes beyond their legal limit. This was forgery.

But there were stories that floated around in real estate circles. Times Wolfram foreclosed for payments that arrived just a few days late. Checks people swore had been sent on time.

No one ever listened to stories like that. The general consensus was, if a person couldn’t pay their loans, of course they were blaming their bookkeeping on someone else.

Tristan yanked more folders from their spots. One for every check they’d ever sent Ralph Wolfram, and compared each to the online bank records. Most of them matched, but a couple were dated a few days differently.

The fuck?

He scanned his hard copies, took the images from online, and stuck it all in a secured PDF that he emailed to Christian.

His phone rang about two minutes later.

“Is this real?” Christian asked, by way of greeting.

“Yup.”

“Fuck me. And you have hard copies.”

Tristan snorted. “You’re really asking me that?”

“Sometimes, it’s a pleasure working with you.” Christian chuckled. “Hell, I might even waive the double weekend billing for this.”

“Considering how much legwork I just saved you?”

“I’ll write up a request for injunction this weekend,” Christian said. “File it first thing Monday morning, and get the IRS off your backs while this is investigated. Hell, I’ll wait on the courthouse steps until they open, to make sure this is done a-sap.”

“Thanks.” For the first time in weeks, Tristan felt a sense of relief around the looming case. He wasn’t done digging though. The foreclosure cases were public record, and while he wouldn’t have access to anything not submitted to the court, he could look for patterns.

Tristan dove head first down the rabbit hole of court documents surrounding Ralph Wolfram’s dealings.

He called Victoria, but wasn’t surprised when he went to voicemail. “I think I have something. Information-wise. I wanted to let you know. And I want to talk.” Just to see her. “We can keep it strictly business, if you prefer.”

He hung up, unsure if she would call him back. He could taste how close he was with a resolution to the IRS issue, but could he make things right with her?