Rebuilding year reconstr.., p.1
Rebuilding Year (Reconstruction Book 2), page 1
REBUILDING YEAR
RECONSTRUCTION
BOOK 2
A.M. ARTHUR
Briggs-King Books
CONTENTS
Blurb
Dear Reader,
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
Epilogue
Also by A.M. Arthur
About the Author
BLURB
Angelo Voltini can seduce anyone he sets his eyes on, but now that he’s forty his hookup habit is wearing thin. He wants something real but doesn’t know how to get it. When his mentor dies and a business-saving inheritance hinges on Angelo being in a committed relationship, he impulsively nominates his newest tenant for the job.
Bryan Gillespie is recently paroled and still finding his footing in the outside world. He barely has time to be a good brother, uncle, and employee, never mind think of romance. Angelo’s shocking proposal—fake it for a percentage—catches him off-guard. And intrigues him. Bryan is attracted to Angelo in all the right (and wrong) ways, but he’s leery of dating his landlord—even if the relationship is supposedly fake.
Their chemistry is real and explosive, and neither man can resist the other’s pull. But what kind of future can two men have when what they’re building is set on a foundation of lies?
Rebuilding Year contains an uptight home renovator with commitment issues, an ex-con with a lot to prove, lessons in secrets and forgiveness, and adult sexual situations that include voyeur/exhibition role-play.
REBUILDING YEAR
Copyright © 2024 by A.M. Arthur
First Edition
All rights reserved. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, without the express written permission of the author.
All characters and events in this book are purely fictional and have no relation to anyone bearing the same name or names. No generative AI was used in the creation of this book.
Briggs-King Books
Cover art by Morningstar Ashley
DEAR READER,
Welcome to a new journey in the familiar stomping grounds of Neighborhood Shindig and Reynolds, North Carolina. From his very first line in LEAP YEAR, Angelo Voltini became a force of nature, and a character I couldn’t wait to explore more. Snarky, confident exteriors often conceal soft, bruised interiors. I didn’t initially expect to pair him with Bryan, but…well, some of the best stories are completely unexpected.
I hope you enjoy the next installment of the Reconstruction series! As always, many thanks to the wonderful notes and comments from Eileen. You are a gem. Thanks to EM for your support and loving these guys. And a special shout-out to Morningstar Ashley for another fantastic cover.
Happy Reading!
A.M. Arthur
CHAPTER ONE
“Boss, we’ve got a problem at the Bayshore house.”
Angelo Voltini released a long, low groan over the sushi combo plate that had just been delivered to his table, positive he wouldn’t enjoy his favorite spicy salmon roll now. Yes, he’d planned on this being a working lunch, which was why he’d answered Otis Gates’s call at all, but now his previously hungry stomach shriveled into an angry ball of anxiety.
“What’s wrong at Bayshore?” Angelo asked, a touch snappier than he’d intended. Otis’s job was to inform Angelo of issues at the renovation sites so they could brainstorm solutions together, instead of simply fixing the problem on his own. Angelo was extremely hands-on in all stages of his business, but especially when it came to spending un-budgeted money. Extra-especially when it was a job for a client and not his own home-flip project.
The remodel on Bayshore Drive was his own flip, but still. Problems gave him stomach aches, and his doctor was already on him about a possible ulcer.
“Well, when we ripped up the ceramic tiles around the living room fireplace,” Otis said, “we found old oak hardwood under there.”
“How is finding original hardwood floors a problem?” The house had been built in 1943 and they’d already found hardwood under the ugly green kitchen linoleum and the downstairs study. Finding more shouldn’t surprise anyone.
“It’s not the hardwood, boss, it’s the sub-floor. There’s lotsa rot under there, and we may have to replace the whole living room sub-floor.”
Angelo resisted the urge to stab a chopstick right through his eye. Replacing the sub-floor meant removing all the original hardwood to get at it, ripping out the rot problem, and then laying new flooring. It was not an expense Angelo had anticipated, but the living room was the focal point of this renovation. And Angelo had too much pride in his work to ever ignore such a serious structural problem, or to half-ass the repair. “Do you think it’s the entire living room or just around the fireplace?”
“Hard to know until we get in there and start removing the hardwood. Hopefully, it’s contained and not the whole floor.”
“How much extra if it’s the whole thing?”
Otis’s estimate made his already angry stomach tighten up a little more. Angelo was already overextended on two other projects, and he had a fourth, completed house that had been sitting on the market for a month without a bite. Even the open house had been sparsely attended, which was unusual when his name was on the lawn sign. He really needed to get some client renovation bites, but the market for that in the Reynolds area had dried up in the last year or so, and Angelo had no idea why.
Please, just around the fireplace. Please, just around the fireplace. Please.
“Do the repairs,” Angelo said through gritted teeth.
“You got it. Later, boss.”
“Yeah.” He chewed on two antacids before digging into his sushi. He wasn’t hungry anymore but he wasn’t about to waste it. Not when he was starting to pinch his nickels for the first time in ten years, since his first solo flip netted him a cool quarter-million in profit. Profit he’d immediately reinvested in a new renovation, just like his mentor had taught him. Those early lessons had served Angelo well for a long time.
The final lesson? He’d never forget it. Just like he’d never forget the phone call nearly four years ago now, when Joe Tilly called him from the police station asking for Angelo to come bail him out. Angelo hadn’t asked questions, not even when he found out Joe had been arrested for basically stealing investment money from clients to cover his gambling addiction. He simply hadn’t believed that the man who’d invested years of his own time in Angelo, who’d been like a surrogate father in many ways, could be guilty of ripping off his clients and investment partners. Angelo stood by Joe and supported him to anyone who would listen.
Then the investigations began. Proof surfaced, and it shattered the rose-colored glasses through which Angelo had viewed his old mentor. But it was too late to distance himself, and Angelo’s own credibility took a big hit, even though he was one-hundred-percent professional with everyone he worked with and had never mismanaged so much as a nickel of anyone’s money.
He ran professional crews on all his properties, he expected everyone to show up and do their jobs as professionally as possible, and he did the same damned thing. No fucking around, no bullshit.
Yes, Angelo fucked around off-hours, but never on the job, and he never would. Had he been tempted? Hello, dude with a high sex drive. Had he ever sampled? Never within three months of having had a working relationship. His brief fling with a tailor who’d created six rooms worth of custom window drapes for a flip two years ago had happened at exactly the three-month mark of the last check clearing.
He’d already lost his mentor and father-figure. He would not lose a business he’d spent nearly half his life building, not while he had breath in his lungs and a few pennies in his pocket. A true artist could put lipstick on a pig and call her a work of art. A true salesman could take that art and sell it for a cool quarter-mil without breaking a sweat.
Angelo was both artist and salesman.
An artist and salesman who was really regretting all that wasabi with his sushi, so he paid his bill and headed home-for-now. Russell loved to pick on him about Angelo’s habit of crashing in one of his renovation homes, when he owned the house Russell and Patrick lived in, as well as the carriage house Bryan Gillespie rented, so Angelo had his pick of guest rooms. And while those available rooms sometimes seemed like a destination oasis compared to his usual mattress on the floor and storage bins, he couldn’t beat his own in-progress renos for privacy and security. After raw materials were stolen overnight on his first solo reno, Angelo never scrimped on cameras and motion sensors on his sites.
This past week, he’d actually been staying at his completed, for-sale home on Mulberry Court. Three of the rooms (kitchen, living room and master bedroom) were still staged, so Angelo just hid his suitcase in the hall closet and stored his toiletries whenever the Realtor told him they had a viewing (not as frequent as he hoped). And despite a deep-rooted Italian heritage and an aunt who owned a pizza business, Angelo didn’t cook, so his flawlessly designed kitchen remained spotless.
The entire house was spotless and…well, empty. Angelo stood in the foyer of what had once been a boxy, claustrophobic mid-century rancher and was now an open-floor-plan dream starter home for a young family. He could see a couple with a kid, kind of like Russ, Patrick and Frog, running around this house, having birthday parties and filling the walls with photographs and memories. A real life lived here instead of a few generic paintings to suggest what the space could be one day.
The light, airy house was so far removed from the home he’d grown up in that he sometimes didn’t believe his own past had really occurred—not until he went to Aunt Rita’s dark, cramped house for a family dinner and remembered yeah, he’d lived there for half his life. Four kids and multiple adults in three bedrooms had been a tight fit, but they’d managed. Kind of.
He loved his family, but there were good reasons Angelo valued his space and privacy.
Even though it was the middle of the afternoon, Angelo didn’t have any work-specific plans for the rest of the day that required driving, so he helped himself to an artisan beer from the fridge and flopped onto the sofa with his tablet. No sense in hauling around a TV and streaming system when everything fit nicely on a twelve-inch screen.
He’d just settled in to watch some mindless spouse-swap show when his cell rang. He groaned, half-expecting it to be Otis with another expensive problem, and his heart skipped at the name: Dennis Darrow. Joe’s lawyer. He stared at the screen, unwilling to answer because it could only be bad news, and he didn’t want to hear more bad news today.
Unheard voicemails drove him bananas, so he put his sweating beer on the floor and answered the call. “Mr. Darrow.”
“Mr. Voltini? It’s Dennis Darrow.”
No shit. “Yes, I know. What can I do for you?”
“I’m afraid I have bad news to relay, Mr. Voltini. Joe Tilly passed away this morning.”
Angelo closed his eyes against the sudden wave of emotion blurring his vision. “I see. How?” Too many years of watching movies and TV shows about prisons gave him horrible images of his old mentor being shanked by a sharpened toothbrush handle, or bleeding internally from unknowingly consuming ground glass.
“It looks like a massive heart attack. His cellmate said Joe was complaining of fatigue and a headache last night, and when the lights came on for roll call, Joe was dead in his bunk.”
He could have been smothered by his roommate. “Are they positive it was a heart attack?”
“That was the prison doctor’s preliminary assessment, but I did request an official autopsy be done, just in case.” Before Angelo could take any minor amount of comfort in knowing Joe’s lawyer wanted the truth, Darrow ruined it with, “As his only named beneficiary, you could be looking at a big wrongful death lawsuit if it wasn’t a heart attack.”
Angelo groaned. “Whatever. What happens after the autopsy?”
“They’ll release the body to the funeral home of your choice. After that, the arrangements are yours. Along with his final remaining assets.”
“His assets?”
“Yes.” If one word could carry all the smugness of two dozen defense attorneys with airtight client alibis, Darrow managed it. “As you know, Joe had no children, and no family who associated with him. You are named in his will as his sole beneficiary, once all outstanding bills are settled.”
“I don’t…Joe lost everything after all those allegations came out. How can he have any assets for me to inherit?”
“That’s a conversation for us to have in person, young man. I also have a private letter for you, from Joe, for you to read in the event of his passing. Are you available to stop by my office this week?”
“Yes. Hell, I can come over right now.” While he was eager to read this letter from Joe, he was more eager to know exactly what those assets were and how quickly he could liquidate them. This was exactly what his own struggling business needed! An influx of cash to settle a few of his own debts, and give him a cushion to live on until the housing market in and around Reynolds picked up again.
“One moment.” Clicking sounds echoed from Darrow’s end of the phone. “I can squeeze you in at 3:45 this afternoon.”
“I’ll be there. See you in a bit. Wait, do I need to bring anything?”
“Not for this meeting.”
Angelo had been to Darrow’s office twice since Joe’s arrest, so he didn’t need to ask for the address. He sucked down the beer, because it was expensive and he wasn’t going to waste it. His thumb hovered over Russell’s contact while he paced the foyer, not quite needing to leave yet, but now too anxious to sit still. Russell was his conscience and sounding board and very best friend, and he’d listen while Angelo verbally barfed this latest drama all over him. But Russell would probably ask a lot of questions, and right now, Angelo didn’t have many answers.
Call later. Get info first.
Good plan. There were fewer things Angelo disliked more than heading into a situation without the proper information and being blindsided. Knowledge was always an advantage, no matter the game or stakes—something Joe had taught him well.
The unwanted mental image of Joe, dead and cold on a metal autopsy table, made his eyes burn again and his too-full stomach slosh unhappily. His skin was too hot, his breaths coming too fucking fast. Angelo bolted, and he barely made it into the downstairs bathroom before upchucking the beer and his lunch into the bowl. He vomited until all he had left were a few dry heaves and a lot of tears and snot.
Gross. But I feel better.
He washed his face, which was still weirdly blotchy, but hopefully that would clear up on the drive to Darrow’s office. Plus, his mentor had just died. He was allowed to look like a rumpled mess, wasn’t he?
While he drove, he blasted his Beatles playlist as loudly as his ears could stand, uncaring of the occasional glare he got from other drivers or pedestrians when he stopped. One of the few loves (besides food) his mother had instilled in him was The Beatles. Over the years, he’d gone from vinyl to cassettes to CD’s to all digital albums, and he sometimes regretted giving away things that would have netted quite a bit of money nowadays.
Oh well, no sense in dwelling on the past, so he sang along to Tomorrow Never Knows and focused on the road.
Darrow’s private practice was situated in a small office building with a dozen other names on the exterior sign that Angelo ignored. He rode the elevator up to the third floor and walked into the reception area at exactly 3:45. Darrow’s assistant let him through to the inner office, which looked like every single law show set Angelo had ever seen on television, right down to the mahogany built-ins and matching desk, and the monochromatic rows of law books.
Functional and boring.
“Mr. Voltini,” Darrow said as he stood. He didn’t bother buttoning his suit jacket, because the instant he shook Angelo’s hand across the desk, he sat back down. “How are you holding up?”
“Well, I’m here without a speeding ticket,” was all Angelo could think to say. He perched on the edge of a stiff faux-leather armchair. “I’m glad we could do this today and get it over with.”
“Time is likely of the essence, yes.”
That was a weird way to phrase things but Angelo did appreciate the speed with which Darrow was working to finalize Joe’s estate. “Do we have to do some sort of official reading of the will? Or can we skip that, since it’s just you and me?”
“We don’t have to be nearly as formal as you see in movies, Mr. Voltini. As I said on the phone, you are the only beneficiary named in Mr. Tilly’s last will and testament, which was amended, signed and notarized three weeks before his trial began.”
“He changed his will before the trial?” Had Joe known things wouldn’t go in his favor, because the bastard was guilty? That there was tangible proof he’d done the things he was accused of and a jury would have no choice but to convict him?
“Yes, he did. Mr. Tilly had some undisclosed assets he wanted you to have in the event of his death, but one of those assets comes with a stipulation. He wrote a letter to you describing the stipulation, and my instructions were to give you this letter before revealing anything else.”
