Riding the Thunder - Deborah MacGillivray [17]
His brothers and he had been obsessed with bringing down Montgomerie’s empire, vengeance pure and simple for their father’s death. It had taken years, but Desmond had finally orchestrated the man’s financial downfall, starting with claiming Falgannon Isle, Valinor Revisited and the estate in England, Colford Hall. Asha’s grandfather Sean had once put up those properties as collateral for a loan, then defaulted on payment. The deliberate act had left Michael Mershan with a loss of his personal fortune, and facing jail time for misappropriation of bank funds in granting the questionable loan. As a result of the scandal, he had committed suicide when Jago and his brothers were children.
To say Desmond felt cheated by Montgomerie’s death was putting it mildly. His brother had wanted to look the old man in the eyes when he handed him the papers showing the multi-billion dollar empire Sean had built was crumbling and why.
Well, the financial plans were still in place, and Desmond and Trev were pig-headedly determined to go through with them. True, there was a fortune at stake. Only of late, Jago questioned the whole idea. Montgomerie was dead. What did any of it really matter now?
All he had to do was close his eyes, and that memory of Desmond at thirteen was in his mind. Just like yesterday, he saw his brother, feverish, so sick he belonged in bed, yet dressing at three in the morning, getting ready to deliver papers. It didn’t matter that Des was sick, didn’t matter that he’d eaten nothing the night before, or that he’d sat and rocked their mother most of the night while she was in the grips of one of her black depressions. Des always did his paper route, knowing the extra money he brought in often meant the difference between them eating and not.
That memory haunting his soul, Jago knew without hesitation he would walk barefoot through Hell for Des. If finally settling this business with the Montgomeries would give his brother the sense of peace he desperately needed, then Jago knew he’d walk on the hot coals of his conscience to do it.
Taking another pull on the Swisher Sweet, he cast his mind back to Sean’s funeral. Asha and her sisters—Montgomerie’s granddaughters—had sat in the second row. Seven breathtakingly beautiful women, the kind of women men fantasized about. The front row held their six brothers, father and two uncles. Jago vaguely recalled them, as handsome as the granddaughters were beautiful.
Clan Montgomerie’s motto was Look Well. Though he assumed that meant Be Vigilant, in this instance it also applied to the appearance of the striking males and females of Sean’s line. If the scientist who’d cloned Dolly the Sheep ever got around to cloning human beings, he needed to look up the Montgomeries.
Jago recalled how Desmond had stared at BarbaraAnne the whole time. Once she had turned and looked directly at Des. To Jago, it seemed the whole world had held its breath as the two stared at each other. Needless to say, he hadn’t been surprised when Desmond announced he’d be the one to go to Falgannon Isle to handle that end of the business for Mershan International and Trident Ventures. Jago had never said anything to Desmond, but he was aware his brother had carried a picture of BarbaraAnne in his wallet for nearly fifteen years, cut from some magazine. Desmond likely thought of it as a goal, as a reminder of what drove him. Jago figured his brother failed to recognize that he went to Falgannon for more than his role in taking down Montgomerie Enterprises. He wondered how long before Des recognized that fact.
“‘Oh, what a tangled web we weave,’” Jago muttered, then flicked the ashes off his cigarillo.
At the funeral, much to his irritation, Asha had never turned around, so he’d spent the whole of the service staring at the back of her head. It was hard from that distance to tell her from her twin sister, Raven, or for that matter from her elder sisters, Katlynne and LynneAnne. The four women