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“Not today,” I tell her. “Not now. It’s … It hurts.”
That seems to shut her up for a bit, but she’s still following me relentlessly. The noise of her heels is driving me insane and I rub my eyes as I walk, too tired to deal with this now. I’ve got enough problems without Poor Little Rich Girl following my every step.
“Please, Blane,” she says behind my back, but I refuse to turn around or give her the time of day. It hurts though, because I’m a man who protects the ones I love. But not her, I remind myself. She’s on her own now, and she’s got enough money to take care of all of her problems.
“Let me be, Emme,” I tell her sternly and quicken my pace, but she runs behind me, wrapping a shaky hand around my forearm. I turn around and rip my arm out of her touch, watching her lips tremble with sadness.
“I’m so lonely,” she says sadly. “I miss you … You got each other, and I got …”
“You got our parent’s fortune,” I tell her sternly. “You got every last cent, and don’t pretend you’d give it up for us. We’re not going to play the puppets in your little play, so you might as well give up and get lost.”
With that, I finally turn around and walk away, and this time, she doesn’t follow.
But the image of her quivering bottom lip is etched onto my brain now, and I know it will be even harder to fall asleep tonight.
Chapter 4
I’ve done a number on you, haven’t I? I started telling a story but I never did explain what happened, why I’m acting like a total ass. It’s a hard story to tell, and I don’t like thinking about it, but I guess you have to know eventually …
Emme Ford is a thief.
She didn’t do it intentionally. She didn’t ask to inherit all that money, money that should have rightfully belonged to all of us – me, Aiden and Emme.
But she got it all anyway.
My mother died in childbirth, and it’s something I’ll never stop feeling guilty about. Maybe, if there was only one of us instead of two, she would have lived. Maybe, if I never existed, she would still be breathing today – instead of me.
But here I am, and she’s been in the ground for 25 years. Not much else to tell you about that without breaking down.
So my Dad raised us, with my help occasionally.
He was a good man, and he gave us everything he could. We never wanted for anything. I knew he had big hopes of doing more, but he never had time for it with both of us on his hands. Then he met her.
Rachel Ford was beautiful, younger than him, a single mother.
They hid it from us for a long time, only telling the three of us when we were 13. My Dad sat us down and told us we would soon meet a nice lady and her little girl, who was 9 at the time. We were hesitant, but as soon as Rachel and Emme walked through our door, everything was forgotten and an instant friendship was born.
From then on, the kids would beg to be together as much as possible. Our parents didn’t mind at all, because it gave them an excuse to be together. And then before we knew it, we were moving in together.
One kid can be a handful.
Now imagine having two boys and a little girl running around the house.
It was a good childhood, though. We loved each other, and our parents made no differences between us, even though we weren’t related by blood.
And because there were two of them raising us, they had more time to talk about their ambitions. My father was a programmer, like I am today, and he had some ideas that were way ahead of his time. Rachel was a college dropout, yet she proved to be irreplaceable when it came to marketing my father’s ideas.
And so it happened that they built a small company, right out of my Dad’s office in our house.
And pretty soon, that company exploded overnight.
Suddenly, we were moving into a bigger house, getting better cars, hiring housekeepers. We moved to a beautiful building in a rich neighborhood. We had a dog that cost more than some cars for years.
Our family flourished.
I always thought of Emme as a sister. A silly kid with a gap between her teeth, her knees always muddy. She was closest with Aiden though – they were inseparable.
I guess we were close too, but it was never like her relationship with my brother. We didn’t do stuff together, didn’t make plans, just the two of us.
I was always awkward and nervous around her, and it was only when I was about 20 that I realized why that was.
I had a full-blown crush on Emme.
She was 16 at the time and it was unacceptable for so many reasons.
So I stayed quiet and stayed away. I looked away when she tried to find my gaze, ignored her words, and distanced myself. I knew it would hurt our parents if something happened between the two of us,
so I stayed in the shadows.
Years after my revelation, my father passed away.
He was a big man, and we knew he had some health issues, but when he dropped like a stone at a dinner we never expected it. He was gone, just like that – just a body before the ambulance even arrived.
We were all alone.
What we didn’t realize was what would happen next.
My father left everything he owned to Rachel, the woman who showed him love again after our mother passed away. And it was never thought to be an issue – we were Rachel’s children as well, and she would take care of us.
Wouldn’t she?
Life dealt another blow.
Rachel collapsed during a meeting at the firm, where they were discussing her new position as head of the company. We were all so scared after what happened with our father, but we kept telling ourselves it would be okay. Surely, so many bad things couldn’t happen to us at once?
Oh, but they could, because Rachel was diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer.
She was gone in less than a month.
I had three parents, and they’re all buried now. I’ve had two siblings, yet I now only have one. I’ve only been in love with one woman, and she is my stepsister, which is reason alone I can never have her. But the bigger reason is this:
When Rachel died, we were forgotten. The only person who mattered to the lawyers was Emme, the clumsy girl who had turned from a girl with muddy knees to a stunning young woman. She was Rachel’s blood relative, and Aiden and I … we were nothing.
And she was now the one who held the company in her hands.
We fought.
We cried.
We spoke up.
It was all in vain. At the time, we were both in college, and we were informed we couldn’t return home. Our bills would need to be paid, and no one really cared where that money came from.
Emme was desperate after the news broke out. She offered us money, a fund in each of our names, but that fell through after she realized most of the money was out of her hands. She had her pocket money, sure, but the rest of it was tied up in the company.
