Powerful Secret (The Worthington Destiny Book #2)

Kevin Leman Dr., Jeff Nesbit

Description

Sean Worthington is shocked when he hears his older brother Will announce that he will not run for New York's Senate seat. In fact, he's angry. All of his efforts as Will's campaign manager are now for nothing--and Sean is left to handle questions from the press while Will walks away without a backward glance. Throughout his life, Sean has felt like an outsider in his own family. And not being told about his brother's plans is just one more piece of evidence that he's right.Tired of being the odd one out, Sean is determined to forge his own path. Little does he know that it's not easy to escape your family--especially when a powerful secret from the past threatens to explode everything Sean ever believed.Bestselling author, psychologist, and birth order expert Dr. Kevin Leman and novelist and journalist Jeff Nesbit are back with another intrigue-filled look inside the influential Worthington family.

Informations

• Publié par: Baker Publishing Group
• Date de parution: 23 février 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781493401680
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
© 2016 by Dr. Kevin Leman and Jeff Nesbit
Published by Revell
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.revellbooks.com
Ebook edition created 2016
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4934-0168-0
Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
“To those who are given much, much is required” is a paraphrase of Luke 12:48.
“It is when you are weak that true strength comes” is a paraphrase of 2 Corinthians 12:10.
Edited by Ramona Cramer Tucker
Dedication
To all those curious enough to seek, question, and forge their own path in life.
And to those who choose to do the right thing, no matter the consequences.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Glossary
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
Epilogue
Bonus Feature: Birth Order Secrets
Firstborn
Onlyborn
Middleborn
Lastborn
Acknowledgments
About Dr. Kevin Leman
About Jeff Nesbit
Resources by Dr. Kevin Leman
Back Ads
Back Cover
Glossary
AF: American Frontier
AG: Attorney General
API : American Petroleum Institute
DA: District Attorney
DH S : Department of Homeland Security
DOJ: Department of Justice
DSCC: Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee
EPA: Environmental Protection Agency
FBI: Federal Bureau of Investigation
GJ : Green Justice
GOP: Grand Old Party (Republican Party)
IPO: Initial Public Offering
NGO: Nongovernmental organization
NYPD: New York Police Department
1
N EW Y ORK C ITY
“I don’t get you. I don’t get you at all.”
Sean Thomas Worthington hurled the words at his brother, Will. The two faced off outside the door of Will’s three-bedroom suite on 71st, overlooking Central Park’s west side.
Sean thought he knew his brother. William Jennings Worthington VI always identified his goal with laser-like clarity and then relentlessly pursued it, never letting anything or anyone stand in his way. But that very day, just when Will had been prepared to launch his bid to represent New York in the US Senate, he’d disappeared from their campaign headquarters. He hadn’t answered Sean’s texts either.
Then, with only a minute to spare before the scheduled start of the campaign launch and media briefing, Will had reappeared. He strode briskly past Sean and the other members of their family in attendance and mounted the platform.
The speech he’d given wasn’t the one he and Sean had polished for hours until it was a pristine masterpiece. Instead Will said with little preamble, “I’ve decided not to run for the United States Senate seat in New York.”
Shock skittered down Sean’s spine.
“I’ve made this decision for personal reasons,” Will added with the steely calm that was his trademark. “I don’t intend to discuss those reasons now or in the future.” Then he exited the stage while the media whipped into a feeding frenzy.
For the past several hours, Sean, Will’s campaign manager, had handled the unanswerable questions from reporters with professional but vague responses. He had no answers himself as to why Will had suddenly backed out of the race. Will hadn’t confided in him.
Now Sean was beyond furious. Evidently it showed, for one glimpse of his face at the door of Will’s home, and Laura, his sister-in-law, had held up a hand.
“Look,” she warned, “you two have to work this out. But don’t do it in front of the kids. I’ll tell Will you’re here.”
Then she closed the door firmly and left Sean in the hallway. Laura didn’t care that he was a Worthington. Her first priority, always, was to make sure that their home was a safe and loving place for their children. There would be no war of words in their home.
Two minutes later, with Sean pacing all the while, Will opened the door, slipped out, and closed it carefully behind him. Instead of his impeccable Giorgio Armani suit, he was dressed in his usual running clothes for his daily miles through Central Park.
“You drop out of the race now, after all our work?” Sean’s anger flared even hotter. Their mom’s Irish heritage was showing, but he honestly didn’t care. What had gotten into his brother?
Will didn’t reply. He merely took a step back—away from Sean, away from the fight. An indiscernible emotion flashed into his dark eyes. For a second, it looked like pain . . . pity . . . sadness . . . or fear.
Fear? Sean frowned. His brother had never been afraid of anything. As Worthingtons, they’d learned early to face down bullies and not only hold their own but win. Their father said it was good practice for when they’d assume their roles in the family business, Worthington Shares.
“So, are you going to tell me why?” Sean demanded.
Will raised his chin. “I said publicly that I didn’t intend to discuss the reasons now or in the future.”
Sean crossed his arms. “And that goes for me too? Your brother? Your campaign manager? You just walk away into the sunset and leave me to pick up your mess?”
Will tilted his head. Sean felt his brother’s piercing gaze sweep across him—the one that had intimidated Sean and their sister, Sarah, in childhood, making them acquiesce to whatever Will wanted.
But instead of the final brief words that usually ended any fight in his favor, Will relaxed his stance. “I did what I needed to do,” he said stoically. “For me, for you, for our family. That’s all I can say.”
At that moment Sean knew what he’d hoped for was over—the opportunity to work arm in arm with his older brother on a venture where Will actually needed Sean’s well-honed networking talents. He shook his head. He’d mistakenly thought that this time he could make their father, William Jennings Worthington V, proud. That instead of bypassing Sean to zero in on Will as the one the Worthington name depended on, Bill might give Sean the long-awaited “well done, son” he longed for.
It was not meant to be.
“So that’s it,” Sean huffed.
“That’s it.”
With those few words, Will walked toward the elevator.
More than anything, Sean wanted his brother to do something normal, like force him into a headlock or tell him to shut up, like he used to when they were growing up. Instead Will was strangely calm, distant, like he was in a business meeting.
But what bothered Sean even more than the eerie detachment was that indiscernible emotion in Will’s eyes. That frankly terrified him.
What could invoke that kind of emotion in his brother, who wasn’t afraid of anything?
2
As soon as the elevator doors shut, Will was alone with the clamoring voices in his thoughts. He heard his mother’s plea: “ Family first. Promise me.”
He heard his father: “Always do the right thing. But know when it’s time to fight and when it’s time to back away. Listen to that still small voice.”
So Will had listened and done what he knew was right. Eric Sandstrom, the CEO of American Frontier, the most powerful oil company in the world, had played his dark trump card in the sunshine of Washington Square Park and thought he had Will trapped. Will had acquiesced to the demands of Sandstrom’s lawyer lackey, for now.
Will had no explanation for what he’d seen in the photo Jason Carson showed him—Sean sitting with a shady character in a bar. A man now identified as the Polar Bear Bomber. But Will knew what that photo, if released, would mean to the public. Sean Worthington, billionaire trust-fund playboy who usually sported the latest up-and-coming model on his arm at black-tie events, was somehow involved with the bombing of the American Frontier building—the biggest domestic terrorist incident of the past 20 years.
The timing couldn’t be worse—right in the middle of the oil spill fracas, with Sean center stage in chartering a boat that had taken him, Green Justice’s Kirk Baldwin, and New York Times reporter Jon Gillibrand into the icy Arctic waters as firsthand observers. Green Justice had pulled gutsy maneuvers before, but never something colossally stupid and life-threatening, like bombing a building.
Sure, Sean colored outside the lines at times, but Will had never known his younger brother to step outside any moral or ethical boundaries. Still, there was a first time for everything, and maybe Sean’s departure from the norm had been caught on camera. The photo—or, most likely, photos—going viral would not only ruin Sean in the business world, tarnish the reputation of Green Justice, and put Jon in the hot seat with his feisty boss, but it would bring the entire Worthington family under scrutiny. Will couldn’t let that happen. He’d been playing the role of his brother’s and sister’s protector for as long as he could remember. With their father traveling and in meetings as they grew up, his siblings had turned to Will, as much as they hated to admit it. He’d gotten them out of more trouble than he ever wanted their parents to know about. So he’d done what he’d needed to do to keep that photo from going viral. At Carson’s “request,” Will had stepped out