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A lot fucking older.
Setting up my toiletries to shave, I realized that I was doing it just to have something to do. Normally, I didn’t mind a little stubble, but I was feeling antsy tonight, and I was pretty sure that it was because of a certain blonde that I couldn’t figure out.
Granted, I shouldn’t be wasting my time thinking about a woman that I couldn’t have, but Posie Tinley had me fascinated in a way that a woman hadn’t managed in years. Sure, I got my dick wet when I felt the need, but I had given up on relationships a long time ago. Years ago, I had set out to accomplish something, and I hadn’t deviated from that goal yet.
Growing up in a normal household, I hadn’t been prepared for life’s curveballs. Life had been simple, and my future plans had been even simpler. Everything had been blissfully normal, and that had been just as tragic as what had happened later.
My father, Herbert Warrick, had been a corporate attorney, and I couldn’t remember a time when I hadn’t wanted to follow in his footsteps. My mother, Jane, had been a homemaker, and they had made marriage and raising kids look so damn easy. With my father now retired, my parents spent a lot of time traveling, but they were always just one phone call away. Without a shadow of a doubt, I knew that my parents would come running if I ever needed them.
Then there was my younger sister, Ellie. She was thirty-three to my thirty-five, and I loved the girl with my whole heart. Like me, she also looked just like our father. We both had his dark brown hair and blue eyes, though Ellie had gotten Mom’s facial features rather than Dad’s.
Ellie was also married and had two kids, both boys. I also had no complaints about her husband. He was one of the good ones, and if ever there was a man to admire, it was him. Jamie Myers had done the impossible, and I’d give him both my kidneys if he ever needed them.
Staring into the anti-fog mirror that had been placed over my bathroom sink, I appreciated the little luxury of having anti-fog mirrors in my bathrooms. Even though I had more money than I could ever spend in a lifetime, it was impossible for me not to note the little luxuries that I had allowed my money to buy me. I had a love/hate relationship with money, and not a day went by that I didn’t know it.
When I’d been just sixteen, I had developed a software program that’d had the protentional to wipe out corporate embezzlement completely. The software followed all financial transactions until the bitter end. If the final destination wasn’t a certified American Bank, then the software alerted those in charge and froze the money until authorization.
With my father being a corporate attorney, and with me having wanted to follow in his footsteps, I had excelled in all my math classes, and had even taken some college courses while still in high school just to get my foot in the door. I had worked my ass off developing that software.
At any rate, I had patented the software, sold it to almost every huge corporation in America, and I had become a multi-millionaire in little under a year. Still, because I’d had a good head on my shoulders, I had let my father guide me financially, and the money hadn’t impacted my future plans. No matter how much money had sat in my bank accounts, my plan had still been to go to college and become a lawyer like my dad.
Then that all changed at the hands of a psycho.
I had already graduated from college, ready to start law school, when Ellie had been attacked while in college. She’d only been twenty-one, and her life had been changed forever by Trent Hendricks, a piece of shit that couldn’t take no for an answer.
For months, he’d been asking Ellie out, but she’d kept declining because she’d been dating Jamie at the time. They’d already been together for two years, so she’d been serious about him, not that she’d been interested in Trent anyway.
Nevertheless, having a boyfriend hadn’t been a good enough reason for Trent, so he had taken it upon himself to take what Ellie had been refusing. The sonofabitch had raped her so badly that she had been hospitalized for over a month just so that she could heal enough to go home. It had taken months to physically heal from the ordeal, plus years of mental and emotional therapy just to get her to be able to function normally. The attack had been so bad that there’d been a time when the doctors thought that she might not be able to have children naturally.
Through it all, Jamie had stood by her, and no amount of pushing him away had swayed the man. He had loved Ellie through it all, and that was one man that would blow his own brains out before ever hurting my sister or endangering his family. There were family men, and then there was Jamie.
The attack had shattered the very foundation of our family, and it’d been a rough few years before we had felt comfortable enough to push our lives forward.
Only I hadn’t.
Not really.
After Ellie’s attack, my life’s goals had shifted dramatically. Instead of wanting to defend corporations, I had wanted to make up for not being able to defend my sister. While logic absolved me and my parents of what had happened to Ellie, logic had no place when dealing with emotions. Ellie had been attacked, and misplaced guilt didn’t go away just because you knew that it was misplaced.
Still, watching Jamie do the impossible and bring my sister back to us, that had helped me get through the dark times. Knowing that Trent Hendricks had been handled should have also helped, but it hadn’t. It hadn’t helped because it hadn’t been at my hands. Vengeance had its place in the world, and no court in the world could convince me otherwise.
During that time in her life, Ellie had been best friends with Saveria Fiore, Ria for short. Now, anyone that lived on this side of the Mississippi knew who Saveria Fiore-Benetti was, and Ria had taken care of Trent in the days after Ellie’s attack, robbing me of the chance to do so. Granted, had Ria not snatched him up, he would have ended up in prison, preventing me from getting to him, but still. Though Trent had been taken care of, someone else avenging my sister had left me…bereft.
In hindsight, I hadn’t been in the right frame of mind to go after Trent and not end up in prison for the rest of my life, but I was a lot smarter these days. Plus, even though I was more mature and could control my emotions better, Ellie’s attack had endeared me to the Benettis, and having the Benettis on your side was like having a get-out-of-jail-free card on you at all times.
When Ria had first befriended Ellie, those Mafia rumors had concerned me, but Ellie had been quick to point out that they’d just been rumors. Giving Ria the benefit of the doubt, I had given her a fair chance, and she and Ellie had become close. In fact, they were still very close, though they didn’t live near one another and were busy with motherhood and whatnot.
Nevertheless, those Mafia rumors had been confirmed right after Ellie’s attack. Trent Hendricks had gone missing, and to this day, I still had no idea what happened to him. All I knew was that Ria had taken care of it and that no thanks had been needed.
That had been the beginning of the end for me. I had begun investing my money in more profitable ways to finance my philanthropy, and with the help of another software designed for personal safety, I had more money than one person ever needed to have. Even with pouring most of my money into my foundation, Birdwing, I still had too much fucking money. In fact, my entire family was debt-free because I had too much.
Birdwing, plus every last penny that I had, was willed to my sister. My parents had refused to take anything more than I had already given them, and since Birdwing had been named after the huge butterfly that Ellie had tattooed on her hip, it seemed fitting that it would all go to her.
Now, of course, if I ever got married or had children, my will would be amended, but I didn’t see that for my future. With everything that I had on my plate, I didn’t have time to date someone. While I made time to get my dick wet, I didn’t have time for much else. If I wasn’t working, I was sleeping. I didn’t even have friends to have a beer with. Sure, I had a shitload of professional acquaintances, but that was it. Ria and her family were about the only friends that I had, but I didn’t see them often, same as Ellie.
Wiping my face of the remaining shaving lotion, I gave myself a final onceover before heading into the bedroom. Since I lived alone, I had a modest condo by rich people’s standards. To the working class, I had a fancy condo, but it was what it was. I did my best to enjoy my money without feeling guilty about it. Besides, I liked to believe that all the good that I did was offsetting the bad.
Because I did some really, really, really bad shit.
