Page 4 of When the Last One Falls
“You know what, Brantley? Kingston Industries isn’t everything,” he huffed. “Even if you did end up cutting me off, there’s nothing stopping me from snagging a lonely heiress to keep me living in the style that I’ve become accustomed.”
“Only you would think that it’s okay to let a woman support you,” I snorted with disgust.
“Hey, brother, it’s 2022,” he smirked. “Men can be gold-diggers, too. It’s all about equality for them bitches, right?”
That was another thing that bothered me about Beau; his abhorrence towards women was troublesome. They were always bitches, whores, sluts, idiots, worthless, or whatever disparaging remark that could be said about a person. Oh, he loved fucking them, but that was about it. I only called a female those names if she was begging for it while we were roleplaying.
“You’re a fucking dick,” I said before I hung up on the prick.
Taking a deep breath, I got back to work, relishing the day that I could finally fire the sonofabitch.
Chapter 3
Keris~
The drinks were flowing, the music was thumping, the crowd was partying, and it was wonderful.
Once a month, my best friends and I tried to get together for a girls’ night out, refusing to let life get in the way of our friendships. We all worked pretty hard, and all in male-dominated fields, so stress was part of the territory. These girls’ nights were crucial to our mental health, and the hangovers were always worth it.
Best friends for a few years already, I’d met Dylan Finnick and Huntley Winslet ten years ago at an art showing. It’d been a huge expo that had included art in all its forms. While expos were exhausting and expensive, they were great ways to network, and I’d been lucky enough to meet Dylan and Huntley when I probably wouldn’t have met them otherwise. Portal Lands had started out as a one-horse town once upon a time, but that wasn’t the case anymore. Now, it rivaled any big city that you’d see in New York, Atlanta, California, or Texas.
Dylan Finnick was a thirty-five-year-old diamond expert, and she was positively stunning. At five-foot-four, she had blonde hair, blue eyes, and store-bought curves that would do any plastic surgeon proud. However, her breasts weren’t the only thing fake on her. In fact, I was pretty certain that her blonde hair was the only natural thing on her these days. With no concerns about what other people thought, Dylan was a fan of plastic surgery. She got Botox on the regular, her lips were thick with artificial fillers, her breasts were fake and maybe one cup size too large for her frame, her small waist was a gift from liposuction, her hips looked wide due to her small waist, and her thighs were slim thanks to some more liposuction. That wasn’t all though. The girl had gone through the trying and painful ordeal of permanent hair removal, so she looked as smooth as a baby’s bottom everywhere.
Now, you’d think with that much work done, Dylan would look like a plastic surgery nightmare, but she didn’t. Whoever did her work was the best in his field because Dylan was perfection. She also had all that makeup contouring thing down to an art. She looked like sheshouldbe a diamond expert. She looked like the kind of beauty that should bathed in diamond-filled waters.
Dylan had also recently married a man over twice our age, and she’d made no bones about marrying him for money. Again, Dylan gave no fucks when it came to the decisions about her life. She did what she wanted, and she was unapologetic about it. Sean Pickerel showered her with money, and in return, she fucked him like a whore on command-her words, not mine. Since he was already seventy-years-old, he needed drugs to help get it up, so it wasn’t like she was riding his dick all the time-again, her words, not mine. At any rate, Dylan was as honest as a person got, and her loyalty was solid gold.
As for Huntley, she was the complete opposite of Dylan. She was one year older than me and Dylan, and she was an antiques expert. She worked both online and for a private antiques dealership, and she was very good at what she did. However, unlike Dylan, Huntley had dark auburn hair, hazel eyes that were more green than brown, and she was very petite with her five-foot-two frame. Huntley was also all natural to the point where makeup was a chore for her, though she didn’t need it. She had a complexion that would make any beautician envious.
Huntley was also married, though her story wasn’t as sensational as Dylan’s. Huntley was married to Hector Aiello, and if her not taking his last name didn’t tell you everything that you needed to know about her marriage, then I didn’t know what would. Huntley and Hector had gotten married on the fly one drunken night, and the only reason that they were still married was because neither of them were ready to let their families tell them that dreaded ‘I told you so’. Blessedly, they got along well enough, and reality was very rarely a romance novel come to life anyway.
Plus, Huntley traveled a lot for her private dealer, so it wasn’t like she didn’t get breaks from her drunken mistake. Now, as far as I knew, Huntley didn’t cheat on Hector, but she wasn’t so sure about his faithfulness. Though they slept together like any normal married couple, with alcohol no longer clouding up the truth, Hector really wasn’t her type, and she was pretty sure that he felt that when they were in bed together.
I was the only one of us that wasn’t married, and in all honesty, my two best friends weren’t exactly presenting a favorable case for getting hitched. While I was no one to judge their choices in life, I couldn’t see any advantages to marriage right now. Sure, some people could argue that it was time for me to start thinking about kids, but that’s what sperm banks were for. I was thirty-five, so maybe next year would be the year. In this day and age, a woman certainly didn’t need a man to become a mother. We just needed his swimmers to make things happen.
“I ran into Ares Cormac yesterday,” Dylan announced, luckily enough not to have to shout over the music. “God, what I wouldn’t do to ride that particular stallion.”
“No kidding,” Huntley agreed, her eyes looking all dreamy-like. “If I weren’t married, I’d totally throw my hat in the ring.”
Ares Cormac was the owner and CEO of The Cormac Corporation, and the girls weren’t wrong about his hotness. The guy was six-foot-one with dark brown hair and these topaz eyes that glowed when he was eye-fucking his dates. The man attended a lot of art charity auctions, and he always had a gorgeous woman on his arm. Even if it was rumored that he was a confirmed bachelor, I had no doubt that Ares Cormac knew how to please a woman-or women, something else that was also rumored.
“Too bad the line to his bedroom is so long,” I snorted. “Talk about having to take a number.”
“Oh, c’mon, Keris,” Dylan drawled out. “Don’t even try to tell us that you haven’t thought about what it’d be like to sleep with Ares Cormac.”
“I never said that the thought hadn’t crossed my mind,” I admitted. “After all, I’m a red-blooded woman with needs just like every other female on the planet.” I shrugged. “I’m just not interested in waiting in line for the chance. Though gorgeous, I don’t have that kind of time.”
“If I weren’t married, I would have shown up at TCC’s offices in a trench coat already,” Dylan grinned wickedly.
“What stopped you before you got married?” Huntley asked.
“I’d been busy elsewhere,” she answered, throwing Huntley a sly wink.
Just then, Beau Kingston walked past our table, two blondes with him, and it was hard not to think about Brantley Kingston when you saw his brother. They both looked so much alike that they could be mistaken for the other from a distance. Though Beau Kingston was gorgeous, Brantley Kingston was hotter than sin. While I’d never spoken to the man, it was reputed that he was a grade-A asshole, but that was the norm when it came to men with power.
“Beau Kingston’s a decent fuck,” Dylan stated, making another announcement, and Huntley started choking on her drink while I just gawked at her. “What? He is.”
“When did you sleep with Beau Kingston?” I asked once my shock wore off.
