Page 16 of The Enemy

I nodded.

For my kindergarten graduation, my father was in a wheelchair since he had a stroke a few months before. He didn’t even watch me graduate high school. By that point, he was already bedridden. He passed away a few weeks later. It wasodd to reconcile the version I knew as my father to the one my siblings got. Hell, my nieces and nephews were older than I was. It was one whole fucking mess.

“Richard is a good man. He has mentored me, and when he gave me the chance to start over, I took it.”

I wasn’t going to tell Wes how Richard was there when my older brother humiliated me, and he probably had offered to help me out of pity. At least this way, I could give my siblings their peace.

Sensing that the conversation was getting too heavy, he changed the subject.

“You bringing a date for the company holiday party?”

The Rivieres held a holiday party every year, which Richard’s previous wife made into a charity ball. The funds collected went to local shelters.

“Yeah, it will work in my favor if the assholes in the board see me with a hot piece on my arm.”

I looked at what Tatum was doing, and I was sure he would be bringing one of those girls on Saturday night.

“How’s Lou doing?”

His question caught me off guard. We never talked about her. Since my mother’s wedding, I tried to limit what information I gave him regarding her, and he rarely brought her up.

“I don’t know. Busy with school. She rarely comes back home unless her father demands it.”

That was true.

For the last two years, we had both been busy. She went to California to study at Stanford while I finished my studies at UPenn. Her father hoped she would go to Columbia, where he and her mother met.

“Cali agrees with her,” Wes muttered.

“What the fuck does that mean?” I barked out before thinking twice about it.

Wes regarded me with a look I couldn’t decipher. He just shrugged and pulled something up on his phone to show me. It was her social media account.

Why the fuck was he following her?

I had an account but rarely used it. The only reason I made it was so creeps would stop DMing chicks pretending to be me. After an unhinged chick approached me and asked me why I never wanted to meet, I figured I should have one, even if I rarely used it.

From the glance I let myself have, I could see Lou wasveryactive on her account. I quickly realized what Wes had meant about California agreeing with her. Half her pictures had been of her at the beach or on the back of someone’s yacht in different stages of undress—well, a swimsuit, but it was the same shit.

“I can see she’s been very busy with her academics,” I sneered.

If my mothertexted me one more time, I would lose it. We were set to meet at Mr. Riviere’s house. Gerald was old and I was sure he would die sooner rather than later. Since we were all in town for the gala, he wanted a nice family dinner.

Maybe because of how my brother and sister treated me, I found it odd that the Rivieres took well to us. I know my mother was a piece of work, but at the end of the day, she was still my mother, the only person who had ever had my back.

She was fucking brilliant too. While with my father, she changed majors, and now she worked alongside Richard. As his wife, and because, for some insane reason, Gerald liked her, she would have a spot on the board before I did.

When I arrived at Gerald’s house, I searched the long driveway for the pink Porsche. I didn’t realize how fast my heartbeat was until I realized it wasn’t there.

My mother and Richard were already there. I gave my mom a quick peck on the cheek, accepted the drink Richard handed me, and then patted Gerald on the back, before taking a seat on the love seat across from them.

“Where the hell is that girl? She’s always running late,” Gerald muttered.

“She’ll be here soon,” Richard replied, a bit annoyed at his father.

“The company jet is at her disposal, and she can’t be bothered to make it on time? You know how many people would kill to have their own planes?” It was a rhetorical question.

“Some people are meant to spend money. Others are meant to make it. Isn’t that right, honey?” my mother joked, which irritated me because I knew it was a dig to make Lourdes seem unreliable.

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