Page 67 of In a Perfect World

I couldn’t help it.

After my parents had thrown me away so easily, and after Kairo’s betrayal, their support was everything that I needed right now, and I was always going to be grateful for my brother and best friend.

“What about Veronica?”I asked through my quiet tears.

“What about her?”Tomasco retorted, and I really did love my brother.

Chapter 34

Kairo~

It was Sunday evening, and my mother had insisted on a family dinner, done with the discord between her son and husband.Now, while my mother knew the details of my transgressions, Dallas and Leyland were still in the dark, and my father was insistent about that.Even though my brothers would never betray me, my father didn’t want to take any chances that they might say the wrong thing at the wrong time to the wrong person, so my ‘error in judgement’ was a secret known to only me, my parents, and Winston.

However, when I’d gotten to my parents’ house, it’d been to learn that my mother had given my brothers a time of an hour later because my father wanted to speak to me, but I was so done speaking with my father about Triana.While I could admit that I couldn’t make many significant moves without his help, I still didn’t want to involve him any further.

Nonetheless, now that I was here, my father met me at the door, and I followed him into his office because it just wasn’t worth the fight right now.Right now, I was tired, frustrated, and fucking heartbroken in a way that I hadn’t ever expected.

“I wanted to talk to you about something before your brothers got here,” he said.

“What is it?”I asked, sounding like a spoiled brat, but not sure how to stop myself.

“I meant what I said about not losing you over this,” he replied seriously.“I also refuse to let this tear our family apart.Your mother is upset, your brothers have no idea what is going on, and I don’t appreciate either of those facts.Plus, I hate seeing you like this.”

“Like what?”

“Like I would if I ever lost your mother,” he answered tiredly.

Not wanting to get into that conversation, I asked, “So, what is it that you wanted to talk to me about?”

“I’m going to call a meeting with the other region leaders and propose a citizenship lottery,” he said, surprising the hell out of me.

“A what?”

“A citizenship lottery,” he repeated.“I’m going to propose that we create a lottery for citizens that wish to move to Blooming Heights.You can only enter your name into the lottery on your eighteenth birthday, and the move is permanent.”

“How would that work?”I asked, intrigued by the idea.“How would Blooming Heights sustain the new growth in population?”