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3
Finn
After all the drama, everyone finally went to bed.
Sylvie dealt with her hysterical friend, while Mom and Dad welcomed me home. It was the very thing I had been trying to avoid, but apparently, there was no chance I was going to be able to sneak into the house unnoticed, as I had hoped.
Before I eventually retired, Dad told me about Emma. She was a longtime friend of Sylvie’s. They’d met when Sylvie went and toured Europe. While their long-distance friendship had matured over the last three years, Emma had been given an opportunity to work in the States. The paperwork still needed to be finalized, contracts signed and so forth, and thus, Sylvie had asked if Emma could stay with them until she got settled into her new job.
“I have no idea how long she’ll be with us, but your mother and I talked, and we told Sylvie she could stay as long as she likes. I’m sorry, son. There’s no way I could have foreseen this scenario happening,” Dad said, looking immensely apologetic. “You have enough to deal with. I can’t imagine this was the welcome home you were expecting.”
I laughed a little and shrugged. “Hey, at least you didn’t fly into the kitchen swinging,” I replied, looking down at the baseball bat that now hung loosely in his hand.
Dad’s eyes flew wide open. “God, no. Besides, can you imagine the mess I’d have made? Your mother would have killed me if I’d gotten blood on her good drapes,” he said jokingly.
* * *
It’s past ten when I wake again. It isn’t enough hours of sleep, and the exhaustion remains from yesterday. But I have things I need to deal with today, and staying in bed won’t get them done. My mouth is dry, and I need something to quench my thirst. I push myself out of bed and look around my bedroom. It looks exactly the way I left it over four years ago, like some kind of shrine. I know Mom hadn’t ever expected me to move back here, but apart from the fact that it’s clean, she hasn’t moved one single item. Her nostalgia makes me smile. Throwing on the first thing that comes to hand, I head downstairs.
Emma is sitting at the breakfast bar with her back to me when I enter the kitchen. She doesn’t turn around at the sound of the door, which is a little surprising. Last night, she was all over my arrival. Not so much this morning. But then, her embarrassment was obvious to us all. I decide to play it cool. I don’t want to make her feel any worse, so I casually walk past her like she didn’t scream the house down and scare me half to death.
She says a shy hello in that cute British accent, and as I’m about to reply, my eye falls to the cup that sits before her. It’s a disgusting murky color with steam rising out of it, and I can hardly help but make a remark about it. Maybe it’s because I’m tired, but when she says it’s tea, it makes sense. It still looks disgusting.
My throat is now so dry it’s painful, and I turn and grab some juice from the fridge. It’s cold and refreshing and hits the spot. Just as I’m washing my glass, I feel my phone vibrate in my pocket. The notifications haven’t stopped for the last three days. I mean, my phone is my lifeline and never stops most of the time, but these notifications are different. These notifications are things I don’t want to look at.
You can’t run away from this, Finn.
I know that. I just wish it was all over already. With what lies ahead prominently on my mind, I leave the kitchen. It is only as I make my way up the stairs that I realize I left without saying another word. It’s a bit rude, and not like me at all, but to be honest, I just have so many other things on my mind.
Checking my phone when I get back to my room, I see a message from Gary Hawthorn, my lawyer.
We need to talk.
Immediately, I call him.
“What’s going on?” I say when he answers.
We’ve spoken so many times over the last month that we don’t even greet each other anymore. Instead, it’s just been like an ongoing conversation with small breaks in between.
“You’re not going to like it,” Gary says.
“I’ve not liked anything so far. Tell me something I don’t know,” I quip back.
“All right. Well, Miranda’s changing the deal again. She’s looking for half of the penthouse, or a cash payment of the equivalent.”
“So, more money,” I snarl.
“More money,” Gary confirms, the frustration evident in his voice. I have begun to sense over the last few conversations we’ve had that my lawyer is getting as frustrated with my soon-to-be ex-wife as I am.
“You mean, to add to the money she stole from me?” I blurt sarcastically.
“Yeah,” Gary says with a heavy sigh.
This divorce has now been going on for months, and I’m getting really tired. We’ve been separated for just over a year and a half. A decision I was forced to make when I found out what Miranda had been up to. As soon as I realized she had helped herself to huge amounts of funds from my bank accounts—funds she had been siphoning off in small amounts in the hope I would not notice—I confronted her.
Not even apologetic for her actions, she told me she felt it was her right to take a percentage of my earnings, given the fact that she had been by my side and supported me through my journey. The journey she referred to was the business I had built from scratch. A business that was well and truly established by the time she came along. I was a millionaire when she met me, and I’m now on the cusp of becoming a billionaire. We both knew her arrival came well after the money.
It still amazes me when I think that all my wealth came from a single idea. An idea I then turned into an application. One little app that helps thousands of people make thousands of dollars by using an algorithm to source the safest and most profitable investments. Of course, I couldn’t have known at the time how popular it would become. When it did take off, I suddenly felt like a very small fish in an extremely big pond, and I was not at all prepared to handle what came next. I needed to expand it, to update it, to improve it, and thus, Breck-Tech was born. I employed highly skilled developers to assist me, and by creating many more apps that have proven useful to highly affluent people and huge companies, my business has now expanded worldwide.
