“And the bodyguard stopped that?” Jared inquired, still leafing through the portfolio.
“No, but he took him to the hospital to have his stomach pumped, and didn’t let anyone take any pictures of the incident.”
Jared folded over a page in the portfolio and turned it around for Cox to see. “This company here, Evans Limited, this reads like it’s a private security firm.”
He scoffed. “That company belongs to a friend of Nick’s, Walker Evans, who he knows from growing up in Bryan Station, Kentucky.”
Jared nodded. “And so it’s not a legitimate company?”
“No. As far as I know, it is, but the only time Evans was in contact with Nick was when he ran low on cash. He used to live in a house Nick owned in Santa Monica, but I sold that one too, and threw Walker out. To my knowledge, he hasn’t visited Nick at the house in Santa Barbara, but Nick has only been home two days, and I lost my eyes on Nick when he fired my caretaker, Brent Donovan.”
“Why did he fire him?”
Cox smiled at Jared. “Because he was reporting to me, I’m sure.”
Jared took a breath and leaned forward, closing the portfolio and looking directly at Cox. “I think you need someone levelheaded, patient, who can deal with Nick Madison without getting angry, and who can help him through his transition to sobriety.”
“I disagree,” Cox told him. “And I know where you’re going with this.”
“Torus does not provide long-term managed care of––”
“I know exactly what Torus provides,” he said flatly, holding Jared’s stare, which was not always easy to do. I knew from experience. “Cesar Giraldi and I are good friends, so I know what you did for his son, David.”
Jared shook his head. “That was—”
“Amazing,” Cox stated, leaning forward, his gaze still riveted on Jared. “You saved his life.”
“My fixer, Andy Keaton, he saved his life.”
Andrew was who I replaced when I joined the team two years ago.
“Cesar said that he’d tried everything before your man got there, but somehow he got through to him.”
Apparently, Andrew had gone into a situation where an Italian shipping magnate’s son was completely out of control. Andrew was, Nash had told me, the sweetest, nicest, gentlest guy you ever wanted to meet, and he had worn down David Giraldi with kindness and steely resolve. He was on the job for eight months, and at some point during that time, he and David fell in love. The couple now lived in Madrid with their three kids. It was kind of funny, now that I was thinking about it, how many fixers Jared Colter lost to love.
“That was a fluke,” Jared told Cox. “You know as well as I do that addicts are always addicts and that they need managed long-term care to—”
“I don’t need a shrink or a therapist. I don’t need a life coach or another bodyguard or a friend or a babysitter,” Cox told Jared firmly, even though his voice cracked at the end. It hit me then that Sawyer Cox actually cared a great deal about Nick Madison, and not just as an investment. He’d been there since Nick was seventeen, so the man was more than simply an asset to him. They were friends.
“Where is Nick’s family in all of this?” I asked irritably, because what the hell? Did he not have people who gave two shits about him?
“His father owns a horse farm in Kentucky, and his mother died when Nick was seven or eight; I don’t remember exactly which.” He glanced at me and then back at Jared. “As for his sisters, I know that one of them is a real estate broker, and the other owns her own PR firm. They both live in Lexington.”
“What the hell’s wrong with them?” I asked sharply, my annoyance ratcheting up, hating to hear that he was alone. As much crap as people had talked about my mother over the years, as many fights, both physical and verbal, that I’d had defending her, I sure as hell knew that if I was in trouble, my mother would be right there hovering, driving me bananas but still right fucking there like the mama bear she was. There was no way I could ever miss how much she loved and cherished me. And no, Nick Madison didn’t have a mother, but a father and sisters should have been the same goddamn thing.
“Wrong with them?” Cox squinted at me like I was nuts. “There’s nothing wrong with them. They’re just not close.”
I grunted, passing judgment as I did. Weakness in people was something I had no tolerance for, and ignoring those that you were supposed to love was the only thing, in my book, that was worse. How hard was it for them to just reach out to their son and brother and make sure he was all right? What kind of strain could that really cause?