Crowne of Lies Read online

  Crowne of Lies

  CD Reiss

  CROWNE OF LIES

  By CD Reiss

  © Copyright 2020 – Flip City Media

  All rights reserved

  This is a work of purest fiction.

  Any similarities to persons living or dead is not only a coincidence, it says volumes about who you associate with. That’s why I like you so much.

  Contents

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Part II

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Epilogue One

  Epilogue Two

  CROWNE RULES

  ALSO FREE IN KINDLE UNLIMITED

  Acknowledgments

  Part I

  1

  LOGAN

  Marriage. A deep and abiding partnership where two people take on separate roles to build a more complete life together. My parents, Ted and Doreen Crowne, were perfect partners and perfectly in love. They’d managed a thriving business and six children in a harmonious house.

  I wanted what they had, and no less.

  She was out there somewhere, and she’d appear when she was ready. I wasn’t looking. Wasn’t dating. Wasn’t doing much more than working, and that was my choice. My first goal was running Crowne Industries, and when that was in the bag, the marriage would take care of itself.

  But my father was a worrier, and if he wasn’t content with my life, I couldn’t be.

  We were in our parents’ Santa Barbara place when my father called my older brother, Byron, and me up to his office.

  Before I sat in the chair across from Dad’s desk, I’d been complacent. I could beat myself up with that for a long time, and I would. Byron had given up his shot at running the company, so Dad had groomed me, trained me, told me everything. I attacked everything he threw at me. No job was too small. No task too menial. In five years, I knew every nook and corner of a company with offices on four continents and a research station in Antarctica.

  So I figured he wanted to meet us about Byron’s impending fatherhood or the wedding that was being planned for after the baby was born.

  “What’s this about?” Byron asked before Dad came in, surprising me. I thought he’d at least have a hint.

  “Fucked if I know.”

  Dad came in and shut the sliding wooden door. He didn’t do that unless he didn’t want to bother Mom with the business he discussed with me.

  “Gentlemen.” Dad sat behind his desk, which was also weird with Byron here. “So, your mother is getting worse.”

  Mom had Parkinson’s. Neither love nor money could control it. It didn’t care about the power behind the Crowne name, and the thought squeezed my lungs like balloons in a fist.

  “This was completely expected,” Dad continued, totally fucking together and calm. “It’s a degenerative disease. You boys don’t have to look like I slapped you.”

  “Shouldn’t the rest of us be here?” I asked.

  “All of us have an interest,” Byron added.

  “This is business,” Dad said. “Which means it’s you two.”

  “Then why’s this guy here?” I asked, half joking to protect the threatened half.

  “Logan’s shutting up now so you can finish,” Byron said.

  “Thank you.” Hands folded in front of him, our father directed his attention to me. “She’s getting the best care available. We’re moving a staff in. But…” He tapped his fingertips against one another. “She needs me. More of me, more of the time. And I need her.”

  More of Dad’s attention on Mom meant more responsibility for me.

  Was he handing me the keys to the kingdom?

  Had to be. That didn’t answer why Byron was there, but I was sure that was the upshot of this conversation.

  “So, first things first,” Dad continued. “We’re moving out of Crownestead and back down to Los Angeles.”

  “Why?” I asked, indicating my mother and Byron’s hugely pregnant fiancée, Olivia, sitting at a table on the other side of the glass. Nellie, our housekeeper and cook, poured them both more ginger lemonade. It was sunny, peaceful, and quiet. Why move back to LA when life in Santa Barbara was perfect? “Mom loves it here.”

  “She wants to be near her children, and whatever she wants, she gets. She has a property in mind. She saw the house. It’s easily wheelchair accessible—when it comes to that. I suggest both of you”—he looked at each of us before finishing—“not try to talk her out of it.”

  “Fine,” I said.

  “Where is it?” Byron asked. He’d been building houses since he left Crowne industries and probably had something to say about the neighborhood.

  “Bel-Air,” Dad said.

  That explained why Byron was in the room. He’d just finished building a monstrosity of a house in Bel-Air. Olivia had talked him into making it smaller, but it was still massive enough to get interest from sheikhs and movie stars.

  “Great,” Byron said, hand up as if his opinion would be a relief to our father. “The neighborhood council loves me now. I need to see it sooner rather than later.”

  “Jesus,” I said under my breath. Did falling in love make him thick? He’d just erected a monument to his ego in Bel-Air and Dad, in his infinite generosity, was going to buy it.

  “You built it, son.”

  I felt no satisfaction in being right.

  “Ah, Dad…” Byron flattened his hands to punctuate the start of a long explanation on why this was a bad idea.

  “It’s perfect.”

  “I didn’t have you in mind when I started it.”

  “You didn’t when you finished it either. Don’t worry, we’ll pay market unless we’re outbid. Then we’ll match it.”

  What a damn gift that was. A few hundred mill at market, on top of the free money my brother had gotten to build it as his One Big Thing. The OBT was the no-questions-asked, once-in-a-lifetime gift each of us was entitled to, and now Dad was basically tripling it.

  “No bidding, Dad,” Byron said. “If Mom wants it, it’s hers.”

  Dad shook his head—about to demand Byron take the money he hadn’t even used on the house—and I just couldn’t sit there.

  “Are you serious?” I asked. “His One Big Thing goes to some environmental fund, and now you’re paying market for the house it was supposed to build?”

  The One Big Thing, the OBT, was the one request we made of our father that he wouldn’t refuse.

  “What’s the difference?” Dad asked.

  “We’re not negotiating? Just, ‘Here… take it’? It should go to Crowne for cost.”

  “Mind your business, twerp,” Byron said.

  Screw him for saying it. He was fine giving it to them. He just didn’t want me to be part of the decision even though Dad had brought me into that room for a fucking reason.

  “Exactly,” I said with my finger rigidly pointed in my brother’s direction. “It’s bus
iness. This business. Which is my business. Dad—”

  “And there’s something else,” Dad said. “If you two can get your thumbs out of each other’s eyes for a minute, I’ll tell you.

  “Logan.” Dad looked at me, and I felt the torque of a rapidly changing subject. “Your mother and I talked about this… God, if I could count the hours we talked. We’ve watched you work yourself ragged to prove you can manage an international company the size of Crowne. But every time I ask you what you want out of your life—just a month ago was the last time—you say you want what your mother and I have.”

  “I do. You guys are perfect. So?”

  “How are you going to get it like this? Twenty-two-hour days. Constant travel. The last time you socialized, it was to practice Cantonese.”

  I wasn’t getting his meaning. He’d worked just as hard when he took over from his father. How was I supposed to get the same reward with less effort?

  “You managed,” I said, pointing to the back again, where Mom and Olivia were still drinking lemonade.

  “We were stupid. We got married at eighteen, before Uncle Jerry died. Before I knew it would be mine. You’re running into a lonely life like a starving man chasing a sandwich.”

  “You’re telling me to date? Dad. Come on.”

  I was about to explain that I saw women, but it was a secondary pursuit because I loved what I was doing. But I paused too long trying to formulate a convincing way to explain why loving my work that much was a good thing.

  “I’m telling you,” Dad said, “to get married.”

  “What?” My hands shot to the armrests as I slid to the edge of the chair.

  “Dad?” Byron asked incredulously. “Are you serious?”

  Dad spread his hands on the desk, laying into me with his gaze. “Your mother and I don’t care how much money you make in a lifetime. Or how much you grow the business. She said, and I quote, ‘I will die weeping if the room dims before my babies find their happiness.’ Which isn’t her best bit of verse—”

  “Just get married?” I interrupted. “Should I pick a girl off the street? Hire someone? What even is this?”

  “Dad.” Byron leaned forward with me, holding his arm between Dad and me as if that would stop me from launching. “Is this even legal? What did Joe say?”

  “The board follows my lead.” Dad sat back in his chair. “And management is contingent on my approval. I don’t have to put my children in charge, you know.”

  He was threatening me.

  He’d take away everything because I was working too hard to earn it.

  “What if I’m like this asshole?” I pointed at Byron, who’d only met the woman he was going to marry at thirty-seven. “I’ll be dead before I’m married.”

  “He has a point,” Byron said. Was he actually on my side? Or was he playing a game for the sake of a win?

  “The fact that Byron’s happy has changed the whole equation for us. So, you can blame him for what I’m about to offer, but it’s not negotiable.”

  “I don’t want to hear it.” I said, listening anyway.

  “Effective immediately,” Dad said, “I’m resigning as CEO of Crowne Industries so I can spend more time with my wife. I’ll maintain a controlling interest in voting shares, but I’ll otherwise take on an advisory role from my new home in Bel-Air.”

  “Who’s running it, Dad?” I demanded.

  “Byron.”

  “What?” I must have heard him wrong. I didn’t want to have fun. I wanted to fulfill my fucking dreams.

  “Whoa, whoa!” Byron held up his hands like a traffic cop trying to understand why Dad was driving on the wrong side of the road.

  “Why?” I asked, seeing that my brother wasn’t behind this. There was no way he was faking surprise at this turn of events.

  “Byron,” Dad said, unruffled. “You were raised to do this. You’re more experienced, and with what’s coming…” He jerked his chin toward Mom and Olivia at the table outside. “You’ve become a serious, capable, and thoughtful man.”

  “I don’t want it.”

  Thank God. Thank fucking God.

  “That’s the point,” Dad said. “You’re the only one who can do it well and easily give it up when Logan gets settled.”

  “Married,” I said. “You mean married.”

  “Joe says you haven’t bought another property.” Dad spoke to Byron as if I wasn’t even there. “Correct?”

  “Correct.”

  When had my work lost its value?

  When had I lost control of my own fucking life?

  “Will you do it?” Dad asked Byron.

  “If I don’t?”

  “Yes or no.”

  “Yes,” my brother said. “I got it.”

  Fuck him. I was going to shred his ass and write an apology to Olivia when I was done.

  “So,” Dad said to me. “Go out. Have fun. Meet people. Learn what you can from Byron.”

  “How long?” I barely had enough air for two words.

  “If you’re not married by your fortieth birthday, we’ll revisit.” Dad put his hands on the desk and stood. “Meeting adjourned.”

  “What? So I don’t come to the office anymore? You’re firing me for working too hard?”

  “I’m asking you to wait,” Dad said as he slid the door open. “Become the man you’re supposed to be.”

  I knew exactly who I was.

  I was Logan Crowne, and Logan Crowne was Crowne Industries.

  I just had to prove it.

  2

  LOGAN

  SIX MONTHS LATER

  The Loft Club bar was on the sixth floor of a recently renovated Downtown warehouse. The designers had kept the graffiti from the years the brick structure had been abandoned, cut into the walls to add windows, and covered the bright colors with framed original art.

  Mandy Bettencourt sat across from me at a corner table, diamonds in her ears. Light brown, curly hair pinned up in a precise mess to show off the highlights. Yellow sweater with pearls. Red lipstick.

  “I’ve treated him like a full partner, and what does he do? Runs behind my back, changes the route of a major pipeline to run through a scenic valley. The engineers are scrambling and don’t get me started on the permitting.”

  “Mm-hm.” She smiled, glancing around the room for someone who didn’t talk about work.

  “I have to get him out of my hair.”

  “How old is their baby? Five months? Six? I bet he’s so cute.”

  “I have to get married.”

  She was the only one who knew about my father’s ultimatum, and when I mentioned it, she always shook her head at what an intractable problem it was… until I took a little velvet box from my pocket and put it in front of her.

  She tapped the edge of her wine glass with a manicured finger, staring at the wildly expensive square-cut diamond. “Who is she?”

  “Someone who could use cash.”

  “You want me to marry you,” she stated the truth with a mix of disbelief.

  “I trust you.” I’d known her since we were kids. We’d gone to the same upper school, where we’d developed a close friendship that had only gotten stronger over the years.

  “Right. And so this means we should get married?”

  “Temporary. Just to get rid of Byron. No sex obviously.”

  “Obviously.” She made a face and sipped her white wine. “Renaldo would throw an absolute fit.”

  Renaldo was a deadbeat actor with a handsome face who didn’t have the talent to get cast in a couple of movies, but he didn’t have to because he’d married America’s Sweetheart, Tatiana Winsome, well before she starred in Homewrecker and Hollywood fell in love with her. All he did now was spend her money and give himself a boner when the captions under the tabloid pictures said “actor Renaldo DeWitt.”

  “And that’s why it works.” I leaned over the table for the big pitch. “His wife suspects something, right? You told me yourself.”

  “She’s so awful.
”

  I’d already argued that her boyfriend’s wife had every right to be awful, considering her husband was a philanderer, but she wouldn’t budge.

  “If you marry me, she’s off your case. You keep being discreet with him in private. Show up with me in public. We divorce in three years, and in the meantime, I pay off your family’s debts. He doesn’t have enough to get your mother’s estate in Montenegro out of hock. Not enough for the boats. The debts. The bad habits. Any of it. I do.”

  As successful as her clothing line was, she didn’t have enough either. There weren’t many people on the face of the earth with enough generational wealth to dig out the Bettencourts.

  “I won’t hurt him like that.” She snapped the box closed. “Not for money.”

  That was the Bettencourt problem. Nothing was ever for money.

  “Logan,” she said, pushing the box to me, “we’re friends, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you won’t be mad if I tell you the truth?”

  I pocketed the ring and sat back with my drink. This wasn’t going to go the way I wanted. “Go right the fuck ahead.”

  “Maybe this is a good thing. You don’t sleep. You don’t go out unless it’s for business. Why not just do what Ted wants? Maybe… I don’t know? Date?”

  “Marry me, and I swear I’ll date.”

  She laughed, and I had to smile at the paradox of the suggestion.

  “You really want to go through with this? Marry someone for convenience?”