Once Upon A Friendship. Tara Taylor Quinn

wouldn’t have committed a crime, but because she’d never met anyone with as much skill at hiding his reaction to threats.

      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