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Except I refuse.
I’m not going to saddle any woman with my ticking time bomb of a brain. I’m not going to bring another soul into this world with disease embedded in their body. It ends with me. No, I’ll raise my brother. That’s the only legacy I’ll leave behind. The family, the employees, the economy—they’ll have to fend for themselves.
I’m not going to force someone else to maintain the charade that is my life.
It’s all fake, which is perfect for me.
I have a hundred things to do for Hughes Industries tonight before I go to bed. Another hundred things to do starting tomorrow at 5 am. But all I can think about is Eva Morelli.
She is beautiful with those sad eyes and tragic secrets.
I don’t like charming men.
What is she hiding? I have no right to ask, not with my own secrets.
It doesn’t take me long to find her email address. It was already in my inbox, tacked on to a group message from last year to the donors of a Bishop’s Landing fundraiser. Someone forgot to put them in BCC.
Eva,
You. Me. Dinner tomorrow night at 8 o’clock.
–Finn
I’m already knee deep in a balance sheet when I get a ding on my phone.
Finn,
I wasn’t sure you were serious about fake dating.
–Eva
I answer.
Eva,
The first rule of fake dating is you don’t put it in writing.
Also: dead serious.
–Finn
P.S. Tell your mother.
Chapter Seven
Eva
Technically speaking, I have a job.
I’m the Director of the Morelli Fund, an organization dedicated to helping families. You wouldn’t think it was a full-time job to give away millions of dollars every year, but it is. In the wrong hands that money would be wasted, or worse, embezzled. Finding organizations with both the integrity and the framework in place to make use of the money takes time.
And despite taking care of my parents and my siblings, despite the galas and the dinner parties and the brunches, despite the merciless whir of my life, I have time.
Finn said he knows what I’m worth. It’s not a small number. Most of the money comes from my parents in a trust that pays out annually.
More money than I could ever spend.
Then there’s the property. Leo gave me a deed for my nineteenth birthday. It was a rundown duplex, but the start of an empire. He wanted to build it himself, not relying on family money. He gives me property every year.
