Once Upon a Friendship Read online

  Liam had had a lifetime of practice. “He’s right, Liam,” she said, just in case he didn’t know that this threat was not empty. “If you know something about this Grayson deal, and it turns out to be illegal, and you didn’t say anything, you could be brought up on charges.”

  He nodded, pulling his hands out of his pockets to cross his arms. Not in self-protection, but in a way that showed a confidence that was all Liam. “The Grayson deal is the Indian land,” he told her.

  “I thought that sold to Senator Billingsley.”

  “It did.”

  Menard and Howard were looking at them intently.

  Liam had been out of college by the time his father had gotten all of the agreements and changes he’d needed and actually purchased the land that bordered the Indian reservation. He’d been on the top floor when his father sold the completed development.

  A sale that had never made sense to her. The elder Connelly had wanted that land, to develop it, seemingly forever. He’d finally gotten the tribe to sign an agreement allowing the development, created the successful upscale shopping, eating and housing community he’d envisioned, and then had promptly sold it.

  “Did you have anything to do with the sale?”

  “Are you kidding?” Liam asked. “Grayson was my father’s dream. No way would he entrust that to me.”

  Walter Connelly was not only a controlling jerk, in Gabrielle’s opinion, but he was also plain stupid where his only offspring was concerned. Liam might appreciate beautiful women a bit too much for Gabrielle’s taste, and was prone to wanting expensive things, but he was 100 percent trustworthy. She’d bet her life on that fact. He also had a good business head on his shoulders.

  “What about in your Connelly files?” Menard asked.

  “I am not in possession of a single file that is the property of Connelly Investments.”

  Gabrielle practically gave herself whiplash as her gaze shot to Liam. What? No files? That didn’t make sense.

  “Access to them, then,” Howard said.

  When Liam turned, giving her only a side view of him, as though he was shutting her out, Gabrielle’s stomach clenched.

  “I already told you,” Liam was telling the agents, “I no longer have access to anything pertaining to Connelly Investments. My father took my key card, emptied my office and wrote me out of his will.”

  The air was cold on her face.

  His father had completely cut him off? She’d known something was wrong, that Walter Connelly was acting out another threat of some kind, but surely even in the worst case scenario, the man wouldn’t cut Liam out of his will.

  She’d always believed, as Liam had said, that deep down his father not only loved him but needed him. Other than Liam, the old man was alone in the world.

  “Just before Ms. Miller interrupted, you were about to tell us why your father just happened to disown you a week before the FBI served his office with a search warrant.”

  Oh. No. This was bad.

  “I think I can tell you why,” Gabrielle blurted, afraid that they’d twist whatever Liam might say. “Walter Connelly has been controlling Liam for his entire life. He gives him the world so that he can then take it away if he does anything he doesn’t like...”

  Menard’s gaze softened as she looked at Liam. “Is this true?”

  He shrugged. Grinned. “Pretty much.” And then he added, “Last week I really pissed him off.”

  “I have been privy to the private details of Liam’s dealings with his father for more than a decade,” Gabrielle said, needing these two powerful people to understand that Liam was not one of their suspects. “He insisted that Liam work in the family business and then kept him doing menial jobs. He promoted him to the top floor so that he had the status to appear at social functions as a Connelly, but paid him less than middle department managers. Liam has degrees in journalism and finance, and wanted to seriously pursue his writing. Mr. Connelly sent a piece Liam had done to a friend of his in the business and gave it back completely slashed up. He told Liam that it was time he faced the truth and grew up. That’s when he moved him to the top floor.”

  “It’s okay, Gabi.” Liam’s smile was turned on her. And she was so shocked she fell silent. He must have meant that look for Gwen Menard. Liam never, ever gave her or Marie that look. He smiled at them, of course. Laughed at them, or with them, mostly. But that warm look, the way-a-man-looks-at-a-woman look—never. “I didn’t take the editor’s criticisms to heart. I knew he’d probably paid the guy to fill my article with red ink. And I didn’t stop writing.”

  He turned to the agents. “I have a couple of mother hens who look out for me.”

  “He took away Liam’s car our freshman year of college just because Liam wanted to live in a dorm, forcing him to take a bus from Boulder to Denver five nights a week to work, and then demoted him from mail room clerk to night janitor.” Gabrielle wanted these people to know that Liam’s father was over-the-top mean.

  To the point of abusive.

  “One Christmas, when Liam wanted to have dinner here with Marie and me, Walter forbade it. He gave Liam ten thousand dollars’ worth of gifts that year, and then when Liam came to dinner anyway, he took every one of them back. He was also the only Connelly employee that year who didn’t receive a bonus.”

  “It was an expensive dinner,” Liam said with a smile. “But worth every bite.”

  Liam might not want others to know about his father’s tactics. She understood that he was embarrassed, even humiliated. But these were federal officials. They hadn’t just come around to chat. “Anyway, Liam went into partnership with Marie and me—you can check us out, Threefold, we formed an LLC—to buy this building. We closed last week. Liam didn’t tell his father about the deal, but Mr. Connelly found out just before we closed. He confronted Liam. Liam closed on the deal anyway...”

  She might not have Liam’s testimony or proof of the exact facts, but the truth was clear to anyone who’d been Liam Connelly’s friend during the twelve years he’d been on the road to being his own man while still tending to familial responsibility.

  Menard turned to Liam, her big brown eyes softening even more. “So you’re saying that your father disowned you for purchasing this building?”

  “I believe his exact words were, ‘We cannot be a team, you and I. I can no longer trust you.’”

  Gabrielle’s breath caught in her throat.

  “He can no longer trust you?” Agent Howard’s investigative manner wasn’t softening at all. “For buying an old building?”

  “For using money he and my late mother put in a trust for me without telling him. He claims that I was duplicitous in that I deliberately hid from him an investment of ‘family’ money.”

  “This guy sounds like a real...” Gwen Menard stopped herself.

  But the agents had a few pieces of information to impart before they left.

  The FBI was seeking charges against Walter Connelly, for running a Ponzi scheme and money laundering. They were accusing him of defrauding clients out of millions of dollars. He’d taken their money, telling them he was investing it in the Grayson Communities, after he’d already sold the development. He’d used a small portion of that new money to purchase land that he’d billed as phase two of Grayson but that had, in fact, been swampland. He’d continued to take investments and then used the newer monies gained to pay dividends to earlier investors. The rest of the money had been deposited into legitimate businesses but then spent to buy things that did not exist anywhere except on paper. In reality the money had been given back to Walter, who could spend it at will without any way for it to be traced.

  Any Connelly assets that were part of the investigation had been frozen.

  Walter Connelly was under arrest.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  LIAM WASN
’T GOING to panic.

  “If I’m somehow going to be implicated, I’m going to cooperate fully,” he said to Gabi, who was sitting in the passenger seat of his BMW an hour and a half after she’d burst into his apartment. They were on their way to FBI headquarters, where his father was being held for questioning before being booked into a city holding cell.

  If Agents Menard and Howard had thought they were going to get a reaction out of him by informing him that he no longer had access to any of his father’s assets—as if his reaction to the news was somehow going to trap him in his supposed lies—they must have been disappointed.

  They were a week late on that blow. He’d already lost everything. Knowing that some of Connelly’s assets were frozen didn’t change his day a bit.

  “Did you call George?” Gabi’s question kept him focused—unlike the horror on Marie’s face when they’d let her know what was going on. He’d felt a stab of fear then.

  But he was a man, in spite of his father treating him like the stupid kid he might once have been. He’d handle this.

  “I called him,” he said. “While you were out front getting Marie.” They’d told her the news in the coffee shop’s back office. “He wasn’t in his office and didn’t answer his cell. I left messages both places.”

  “Chances are he’s with your father.”

  He agreed. Which made him more eager than ever to get where they were going. Ten miles had never seemed so far.

  “Did your father really cut you out of his will?”

  Did he detect a note of hurt in her voice? Liam glanced in her direction. Gabi was watching the traffic. Of course. She was always on the lookout for the dangers ahead.

  “Yes.”

  “Last week?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh.” The bite in her tone bothered him. He’d hurt her. As usual, he’d been thinking about his own life.

  “It had nothing to do with you or Marie, so my not telling you—”

  “It’s okay.”

  “No, it’s not. And I should have known that. I’m... I didn’t like the way I saw myself in your eyes.” They were stopped at a light and he glanced over at her. “Like I’m some kid whose daddy abuses him and he just keeps going back for more.” It was humiliating. And worse.

  Her gaze softened. “You might have wanted to check your vision against ours,” she said. The small smile on her lips had him looking back at the road. Staring at it.

  He’d...felt...something. From Gabi. His Gabi. The feeling hadn’t been sister-like.

  And that was not only humiliating. It was horrible.

  “You’re way stronger than you know, Liam,” she said, as the light changed and he started forward. “I see a man who puts up with his father’s abuse while still managing to claim an identity in his own small ways, because you know he has no one and relies on you. You subjugate your own desires for his, but because you think it’s the right thing to do, to be responsible, not because you fear what he can do to you.”

  Her vision was definitely different from his. But it wouldn’t be forever. He was working on becoming the man she seemed to think he was.

  “What about this car? He didn’t take it.”

  “I paid it off last year, but even so, the old man kindly informed me that I was welcome to keep it.”

  “He didn’t know you’d paid it off?”

  “Are you kidding? Nothing happens without him knowing about it. He knew we’d closed on the building before I drove from the closing back to the office. His car remark was just to get a rise out of me.”

  He waited for her to ask if it had. Any other time she would have.

  But he hadn’t run to her this time. He’d shut her out.

  “It didn’t,” he said, frowning as he signaled a turn and changed lanes. “Get a rise out of me,” he clarified, pushing harder on the gas pedal, increasing his speed to two miles above the limit. Any more than five could get him a ticket, and he didn’t have time for that.

  “You’re really cut off, Liam. When the government freezes assets, they aren’t kidding. It means they have some pretty substantial evidence...”

  Biting back his irritation—why was it that people couldn’t see that he was going to be just fine without his father’s money?—Liam said, “I was already really cut off.”

  “But...”

  “And you know what?” He took a corner with enough speed that his tires kicked up gravel. “When those agents told me that some of his assets were being frozen, my first reaction was relief.” She turned and met his gaze briefly before he returned his attention to the road. “Yeah, relief,” he repeated, measuring the words for their accuracy and finding them completely so. “For the first time in my life I don’t have the weight of that blackmail tool hanging over me. I don’t have to fear losing what I’ve been given, or measure every single one of my decisions by the dictates of my inheritance.”

  “But—”

  “I know, I’ve still got my trust. And you’re right, I am relying on that security while I get established. I get that I’m really lucky...”

  “—I was going to say that your inheritance should never have been fodder for blackmail...”

  He turned in to the federal building parking lot as her words registered.

  “And that trust money was from your mother’s family. Designated by your mother’s parents to go to you...”

  He chanced another glance at her. It was there again. That sense that something was different.

  As if she was a woman, not just his best friend.

  The idea panicked him far more than the possibility of being wanted by the FBI. Gabi and Marie...they were the only family he had. He was not going to screw that up.

  Most particularly not with baser urges that waned with time. He liked women. He was good with that.

  But not Marie and Gabi. He couldn’t risk breaking their hearts. Couldn’t risk losing either one of them.

  And Lord knew he’d never yet known a woman—in a man-woman sense—whom he didn’t eventually tire of. He’d yet to meet the woman who could corral his interests...

  They’d arrived at their destination.

  It was time to see his father. Proud. Strong. Domineering. And locked up.

  Liam had no idea how he was going to handle that. But was glad Gabi was with him.

  * * *

  GEORGE COSTAS, CONNELLY’S head corporate attorney, had been present when Walter Connelly had been served his warrant. He’d accompanied his longtime employer and closest friend to FBI headquarters. He’d advised Walter to be completely honest and forthcoming. And then he’d left, promising to get to the bottom of everything.

  Gabrielle heard the report from the agent who’d been sent to take them back to Liam’s father—Agent Bill Cross. Cross, a man who looked to be about forty-five, was dressed like his counterparts in a suit with a sedate skinny blue tie. His expression grave beneath short graying hair, he led them to a room with a table and four chairs, where Walter Connelly sat waiting.

  The first thing Gabrielle noticed through the glass on her way in was that Walter wasn’t handcuffed.

  “You want to go in alone?” she asked Liam as his old man looked up and saw them standing outside the door.

  “No,” Liam said. “If you don’t mind, I’d like you to come in with me. You’re my friend, and a great lawyer. With George’s understandable absence, I’d like your take on anything my father has to say. I want to know exactly what evidence the FBI has, what he’s been asked and if what he’s told them is in any way detrimental. I’ll pay you for your time, of course.”

  She nodded. She wasn’t going to take money from him, but they could deal with that later. Right now, the man watching them from inside that room, a man who looked neither aggressive nor beaten, was their priority. Nervous
, but determined not to let Liam guess that, she followed him into the room, closing the door behind her. She might not like Walter Connelly’s parenting skills, but he was an impressive businessman with an intimidating demeanor.

  He’d never approved of Liam’s friendship with her and Marie—he hadn’t even bothered to say hello on the day of their college graduation. Liam had introduced them. Walter had appeared to not have heard.

  “Dad, you remember Gabrielle?”

  The old man looked in her direction and then back at his son, giving not a single clue to what he might be thinking. “I do.”

  Pulling out a chair, Liam sat across from his father, indicating that Gabrielle should join them.

  She sat next to Liam.

  “I imagine they can hear everything we say,” Liam started. Not the first thing she’d have said when confronting an estranged parent in jail, but appearances had always been far more important to the Connellys than she’d ever been able to understand.

  “I have nothing to hide,” Walter said. His face was no more lined than she remembered from her last glimpse of him three months before—sometime around Thanksgiving—when she and Marie had accompanied Liam to a huge fund-raiser at the art museum. Jenna had been out of town and he hadn’t wanted to be accompanied by their dads. The expression on Walter’s face when he’d seen them walk in had been about what it was now.

  “What’s going on, Dad?”

  Walter clasped his hands on the table and looked his son directly in the eye. “I have no idea.”

  Liam’s jutting chin was the only sign of his frustration. “Look, Dad, I’m sorry I transferred the trust money without informing you. I’m sorry I bought a building without giving you a heads-up. Now let it go. They told me you’re under arrest. They’re going to hold you. They don’t do that for nothing. Tell me what’s going on.”

  Leaning forward, Walter put his nose close to Liam’s but didn’t lower his voice. “I’m telling you, I have no idea what’s going on.”

  Liam studied his father. He took a deep breath. And studied some more.