AUSTIN

I slam my palm on the closed door and curse under my breath, “Fuck.”

My back falls hard against the wall as I take a few seconds to gain my composure. With my dick solid as a rock and my heart revved up, my brain is having a hard time telling both to calm the fuck down.

I rub a hand over my eyes and pinch the bridge of my nose. This day has turned out to be the opposite of what it should have been, and it’s not even nine o’clock.

Pulling my phone from my pocket, I power it up and tap on Gregg’s name.

Before he finishes saying, “Hello?” I’m shouting, “What the hell happened last night?”

“Tyler’s dead,” Gregg says with a raspy voice.

I spit into the phone, “I know. There’d better be a good reason I found out from Bryce and not you.”

“Try answering your phone, asshole.” His breathing is heavy.

I know he doesn’t need my shit right now. He knew Tyler, too, and his ass is on the line just as much as mine, but he doesn’t have a facade to hide behind.

“What happened last night, Gregg?”

“I don’t know, man. We all left when the sirens came through. I was with Julie. We were home, asleep. It wasn’t until my phone started blowing up this morning that I heard Tyler had gotten into an accident. He was getting on the freeway on his way back to Richmond. Car lost control and slammed into a barricade.”

“The police are looking or us. They know he came from a race.”

Gregg lets out a sigh. “Yeah, he was in the car with friends. One was taken to the hospital, but everyone else is okay. They were shaken up and told the cops where they had been. They can’t put this on us, right?”

“They can’t. It’s just politics. No one is coming after us. It didn’t happen during an actual race. You have any info on the funeral?”

“No. I’ll keep you posted. You’re gonna pay for it, right?” Gregg asks.

My fingers massage the back of my neck, feeling the clamminess of my skin beneath the collar. “I can’t leave a mother to bury her son like that. Just get me the info, and I’ll take care of it.”

“Will do,” he says with a slight bit of hesitation in his voice. “You okay? I know this is a bit unnerving, but you sound … off.”

Clearing my throat, I lift my head and get my shit back in order. “I’m fine. Make sure the next race is still on. We’ll make it a tribute to Tyler.”

“Next race? Austin, are you sure you want to have another race with the police breathing down our necks?”

I give a light laugh. “Can’t think of a greater rush.” With my hand on the door, I open it and step out into the hallway. “We race for Tyler. Now that Beckett’s out, I want to scout some new talent.”

He lets out a heavy sigh. “Whatever you say.”

I end the conversation and let the phone slide back into my pocket.

I might be a world-class idiot to want to race right now, but I seriously can’t think of a better way to get all this negative energy off my skin. It’s the only way I know how to blow off steam.

Racing cars might seem reckless, but the last time I felt out of control, I went and joined the Marines. I don’t regret it one bit, but the dangers were just the same.

I still have nightmares about the things I’ve seen.

“Mr. Sexton, you have your morning meeting in the boardroom,” Stefanie says, rising from her desk as soon as she sees me.

I want to tell Missy to fuck off, but I won’t do that to Stef. She’s too sweet, and Missy would eat her alive.

Without a word, I do an about-face and head toward the boardroom. Stefanie is in tow with her notepad in hand. As my assistant, she has the responsibility to take notes and be by my side for any requests I have.

This might be a board member meeting, but Bryce, Missy, and I have always brought our assistants with us, which means … Pyle.

She’s already in the room when I enter.

Bryce is in one of the large brown executive chairs surrounding the conference table. She’s in a black chair against the wall behind him. Her head is down, and she has a notebook on her lap. She glances up at me out of the corner of her eye and then darts right back to fidgeting with the damn thing.

When her hand slowly moves to her mouth, I know she’s remembering the way my lips felt against hers, and—fuck me—my cock remembers, too.

Her eyes meet mine, and she flinches, dropping her notebook on the ground. I try to hide my smirk as I take a seat on the opposite side of the table, placing my arms on the armrests of the chair and leaning back in my seat.

I’m swiveling from side to side, watching as Bryce is hunched over, thumbing a text into his phone. Stefanie is behind me, nervously tapping her pencil. These meetings always make her jittery, but she’s been with me since the day I started, so I’m used to it.

I swivel my chair around to her and raise a brow, teasing her nervousness. She scowls at me, and I let out a small laugh.

Turning back toward the desk, I look around the room—the long mahogany table that seats up to sixteen, the beige walls with photos of San Francisco cityscapes, a large television screen on the back wall that’s on with the Sexton logo as a screen saver.

No matter how many things there might be in this room, I can’t help but notice Jalynn. She’s put on a tacky argyle cardigan over her navy-blue dress, which is sexy in the way it hugs her curves, but her sweater looks like her grandmother knit it.

She’s chewing on her pen cap. It’s a disgusting habit, yet the way her lips wrap around the cap as her hair cascades down her shoulders in long waves makes me wonder what it would be like to wrap my hand around that hair and take control. If she has an oral fixation, I can think of a few things she can busy that pretty little mouth with. One of them being my—

“Sorry I’m late. I was on a call with your father,” Missy says as she enters the room, wearing a skintight leather dress that dips low to show off her fake Ds, which my father bought for her as a wedding gift.

If she were anyone other than the money-hungry whore who’s trying to trample over my mother’s memory, I’d think she was hot. But she’s a grade-A bitch, so yeah, she’s as ugly as sin.

Bryce cuts right down to the chase. “Let’s make this fast. I have real business to tend to.”

Missy takes her seat at the end of the table. Her hair is in a tight bun, pulling her skin taut into her Botoxed forehead.

“Bryce Sexton, are you insinuating that this isn’t real business?” she asks snidely.

“If this were an executive meeting, shouldn’t Dad and Tanner be here?” Bryce asks, causing Missy to smile.

Her assistant, Marcus, walks into the room and closes the door behind him. He hands her a binder and then heads back to stand at the door, like a bodyguard.

She slowly opens the binder. “Are you sure you want your assistants in the room? This is confidential information.”

“They stay,” Bryce answers before I do.

Stefanie has signed a nondisclosure agreement, as I’m sure Pyle has, too. Plus, Bryce and I can’t trust Missy as far as we can throw her. We decided early on, the more witnesses, the better.

Missy doesn’t argue with Bryce. Knowing her, she looks down at the girls like ignorant little office wenches when they do more work as executive assistants than she’ll ever do.

Missy crosses her hands over the binder and begins, “As you know, your father has signed over half of his stake in the company—twenty-five percent—to me. With this gift comes great responsibility, and certain changes need to be made in the company. Your father and I have found a buyer for the print and digital properties of Sexton Media.”

Bryce looks like he’s about to pounce, but I chime in first, “Doesn’t matter what you want. It’s a majority vote.”

“We’ve been in discussion with Tanner,” Missy says with a sinister grin. “And he seems like he can be persuaded.”

“Bullshit,” Bryce bellows.

I nearly jump out of my seat. “Tanner would never sign off on that. He knows what this company meant to our mother, and he’d rather die than let you take it apart.”

“Austin, honey”—she has a condescending tone—“your mother has been dead for eight years. It’s time you stopped the charade that she had anything to do with the success of the company. Marina Sexton was the face. Edward Sexton is the brains.”

My blood boils, and the simmering rage has just turned into a blistering inferno.

“Our mother built this company from a local quarterly magazine into a billion-dollar empire,” I shout. “She drove from door to door, making deliveries when no one would invest in her dream. She gave up everything to make a magazine that everyone else said would fail. She drove her damn car off a cliff on her way to make an advertising deal. Don’t you dare say she was just a face. Marina Sexton was the smartest, most driven woman to ever walk this earth.”

I can feel the heat simmering under my skin, and my finger throbs from the way I pounded it against the conference table with each word of my statement.

Bryce rises and glares at me. The same terrifying glare our mother used to give us when we were out in public, and she wanted us to stop fighting with each other. He might be a replica of our father, but when he tilts his head and raises his brows in that way, he is all Mom.

He hates when I lose my cool in front of Missy, and so do I.

I run a hand through my hair and push it back. As I take my seat, I look over at Pyle. Those hazel eyes are glassy, and that bowed mouth has slightly dropped, as if she is surprised by my outburst.

Welcome to Sexton Media, sweetheart.

Bryce sits back down as soon as I’m in my seat.

Missy seems pleased with herself for chancing such a rise out of me. She looks my way and gives a closed-mouth smile. “As I was saying, Edward is tired from two decades of hard work. He wants to retire.”

Bryce makes a mock laughing sound. “Retire from what? Daily rounds on the golf course and afternoon naps in the steam room?”

“You’d better watch how you talk about your father, young man,” Missy states in a steely voice.

“Young man?” Bryce snickers. “Missy, you’re a year younger than me.”

She flippantly dismisses the comment. “We’ve already discussed this, Bryce. Your father and I are selling the company. Here are the financials for the acquisition.”

She pulls out two booklets from her binder and tosses them down on the conference table toward Bryce and me like she’s slinging a shot across a bar.

As I open my booklet, I look at Bryce, who’s giving me an I told you expression. I clench my jaw and thumb through the pages.

“You’re looking at those rather quickly, Austin. If you’d like, I can explain the figures to you,” Missy says, causing me to glare at her.

“Our digital revenue is three hundred fifty million, the online revenue from the news operation in three hundred eighteen million, and our reach across our fifty websites is forty-one million unique visitors per month,” I quip, making Bryce look at me with a raised brow. I turn to him. “I’ve been reading the financials since I was thirteen years old. You just assumed I didn’t know basic math.”

Bryce laughs lightly to himself but then morphs right back to his pissed-off face.

I toss the booklet on the desk and rise. “Doesn’t matter how good those numbers look. We have enough money to afford anything we want. This company is worth more in memory share and heart than what’s in that thing,” I say, motioning to the booklet that would make us billionaires.

Pyle is staring at me again with these big doe eyes, and I can’t fucking take it.

Why the hell did we think it was a good idea to have assistants in here again?

Missy leans forward, her steady glare beading up at me. “Sit down, Austin. We’re not done.”

I’m not about to listen to her, but Bryce gives me the nod to sit down. I shake my head but do as he requested because we are the only team here, and we have to be a united front.

Stefanie leans forward and whispers into my ear, “Would you like me to get you anything? Perhaps a stiff drink?”

I look over my shoulder and see her leg is bouncing like a basketball. “No, thanks. If you want to get out of here though, it’s okay.”

“I’m good,” she says and sits back in her seat. “I got your back.”

With a sideways grin, I tell her, “That’s my girl.”

When I turn back at the table, I see Bryce is still poring through the financials, and Missy is searching through her binder. Pyle, on the other hand, is looking my way with pinched brows. Her gaze isn’t on me; it’s focused on Stefanie.

Missy leans back in her seat and crosses her legs. “Take the papers home and study them. Your father and I will discuss it with you in greater detail at a later date.” Her arms are draped gracefully on the chair as she continues, “In the meantime, we have to keep this company as sharp and sexy as possible to attract even more buyers. Our first venture is going to stem from San Francisco and go into the heart of Hollywood.” She puts her hands in the air like she’s showcasing a marquee as she says, “The secret world of street racing.”

My stomach falls with her words, especially when she immediately looks my way.

“It’s been done a thousand times before,” Bryce drawls as if bored with the idea.

But Missy doesn’t miss a beat. “Not the way we’re going to do it.” She rises from her seat and grabs the remote control from the table. The screen comes alive with raw footage of races. “Drag racing, highway and road racing, cannonball runs,” she says, listing off the different variations of street racing. “Across the country, these races are not sanctioned. They’re dangerous, and they have law enforcement cracking down.”

That doesn’t sound very sexy, I mouth, just in time to see Vin Diesel’s and Paul Walker’s faces on the screen. I should have known this was going to be her tie-in.

“The beautiful Paul Walker died at the hands of a skilled driver as they were taking a drive at a charity event. It woke up the nation. People are more aware than ever about the dangers of racing.”

The proposal is more impressive than anything she’s capable of. I raise my brows toward Bryce, who gives me an eye roll. We both know she has zero credit in putting this together.

Nevertheless, she continues, “Despite his death, Fast & Furious is a box office gold mine. The franchise has generated over five billion dollars worldwide. This story has the sex appeal from the film already built in. It has the audience from the movies, and it has the social concern of the people who are seeing the rise in street racing increase with each film.”

The screen continues to play videos from the film and morphs into real-life crashes, deaths, and chaos from the reality of street racing. I turn away from the screen. Not because of the street racing, but because of the images of crashing.

The death that follows.

The memory of the hurt.

The pain of loss.

It all hits me hard.

“We get the picture.” Bryce grabs the remote off the table and turns the television off. With a huff, he leans back and adjusts the clip on his tie. “You did an excellent job on that presentation, Marcus.”

“Thank you,” Marcus says quickly before stepping back into the shadow of the doorway.

Missy doesn’t look too pleased with him acknowledging that he did all the work. With a wave of her hand, she motions for Marcus to approach the table. His head is bowed as he takes ten steps toward her. When he reaches her, she curls a finger, telling him to move even closer. He bows down to put his ear up to her mouth.

Despite the closeness, she practically screams into his eardrum, “Get me a latte.”

Marcus jumps back. “Coming right up.”

He scurries out of the room, closing the door behind him.

Bryce tries to be the voice of reason. “I know you’re new as a shareholder, but this isn’t the type of thing we do. Our editors and staff put these stories and campaigns together.”

“This is what I did when your father made me head of sales four years ago. Now that I’m an owner in the company, I want to do things this way. Story ideas come from the top and trickle down.”

I rub my eyes with both hands and press the heels of my palms into the sockets. “I take it, you have advertisers lined up?”

“Not yet,” she says with disdain. Then, she proudly adds, “I have already commissioned the newspaper to start on the local scale. We have our best reporters on the scene to uncover the masterminds behind San Francisco’s street racing.”

I hold my hands up in a stop motion. “You have no right to do that. Bryce is the president of Print Publication, I’m the president of Digital Media—”

“And I’m twenty-five percent owner of the entire company,” she says with a gleeful smile.

The sour taste of her words burns in my mouth.

“Austin is right,” Bryce chimes in. “That is my division. I’ll talk to our editors and see who is the best to carry on the story.”

My eyes widen toward Bryce in a silent plea.

“I’ll do it,” a voice chimes in.

We all turn toward the wall where Pyle is. She looks like she’s startled by her own voice. It’s reminiscent of how she was acting when she was caught crossing the line the other night, causing the race to have a false start. She seems timid, but I know she’s as feisty as a tomcat.

“Who are you?” Missy asks. If she wasn’t permanently frozen with botulism, she’d be displaying lines across her forehead.

“My name is Jalynn.” She looks at me, realizing I’ve finally learned her name. “I might only be Bryce’s assistant, but I also have a degree in journalism. I know people in the San Francisco races. I mean, I’m no journalist … yet … but I can go and scout the scene, be a firsthand account, kind of undercover. Reporters will never get the name of the guys behind the races.”

Missy makes a clicking sound with her tongue. “But will an unsuspecting mouse like you be able to accomplish that?”

Jalynn’s face turns a light red at the insult. This is the girl I remember from this weekend. More like a rat than a mouse. Get this girl riled up, and she’ll give up names just to prove she’s right.

I lean across the desk. “I hate to take Missy’s side on this one because I hate Missy, but she’s right. You don’t belong at those races.”

Jalynn crosses her arms. “Why? Afraid I’ll be able to do more than your journalists?”

I grind my teeth so tight, I feel my own face growing redder by the second.

Bryce is staring at me with squinted eyes, forcing me to look the other way.

He speaks up, “While that is very ambitious of you, we already have reporters working on the story. Jalynn can assist since she’s so knowledgeable on the topic.” He rises from his chair, adjusting the button of his jacket. “If you’ll excuse me, I have a print division I need to be running.”

I laugh in the back of my throat at that comment and the fact that he is marching his ass out of the room with Jalynn in tow.

Missy pushes away from the desk, the unhappiness of being superseded by Bryce written across her face. She stands up and walks out of the room with her binder under her arm and her head tilted up further than it should be.

I, on the other hand, am still here.

“Would you like a flask?” Stefanie asks.

“Next time I get called into one of these meetings, remind me to drink the bottle first.”