Page 66 of The Wrong Sister
I take a deep breath, go back, and fall on the couch. “What?”
He slowly walks to a chair and sits in it. “First of all, I’m glad to see you alive. This is not how I imagined our reunion to be.”
“No shit.” I wipe my face with my hands.
“I was—” He clears his throat before continuing, and this is the first time I focus on anything else other than my pain about possibly losing Maeve.
I look at him. I actuallylookat him. His cheeks are sunken, and there’re dark circles around his eyes. He lost weight. Possibly as much as I have, which makes no sense. I was the one on the damn fruit diet for days. His usually perfectly styled hair is a mess. Clothes in disarray.
He takes a deep breath before continuing. “I’m really glad you’re okay.”
I place my elbows on my knees and lean forward. “I’m sorry, Noah. I—” My turn to pause enough to collect my thoughts. “I don’t know what came over me.”
“I know.” He nods. “I figured that out the moment I saw you watching Maeve on the island and then nearly biting my head off.”
“It’s such wrong fucking timing.” I fall on the back of the couch, covering my face. “Why didn’t I meet her before? Before I made this decision and accepted Wrong’s offer.”
“Then you wouldn’t have met her,” he says with a sad smile.
I shift my attention to his face and find him mindlessly staring ahead.
“Yeah, I wouldn’t have.”
Suddenly, he pulls his wide smile back on and slaps hisknees with his open palms. “This is the time for my ‘I told you so.’”
I drop my hands. “You could have the decency to look a little remorseful.”
“I’m not.” His tone is firm. “I told you from the beginning it was a fucked-up idea to marry just so we can have the voting power back.”
“Not the voting power, Noah. The company. Our company. The company we’ve been rebuilding for the past five years.”
He leans his elbows on his knees and leans forward. “Is it worth it?”
“What?” I ask, not knowing what exactly he’s asking.
“Proving our father wrong. Is it worth it?”
“The company was in our family for generations,” I hiss. “Until he fucking decided that he didn’t trust us enough to lead it. It’s our company, Noah. Our name on the building. Our legacy they want to take away from us.”
Our father inherited the company, and he didn’t have to fight for the rights for it like he’s making us do.
Noah’s quiet. Deep in his thoughts. “I don’t care that much, Ez. I really don’t. I can find another place to work. Look what you’ve done already. Every company will fire their CEO the moment you resign from King Developers. I can build any place on earth, I don’t give a fuck. Let’s just leave.”
I know he doesn’t give a fuck. Because I’m the eldest one. I’ve always been trying to prove myself worthy of our father’s time. I was supposed to lead the company. It had to be me and my brother. But now we have a bunch of assholes breathing down our neck and dragging our company down with their wrong decisions.
“I can’t,” I say. My words are final. “But I need to talk to Maeve. Explain things.”
“Yeah, about that.” He averts his eyes. “You might want to do that now then.”
“Why, Noah?” His tone makes me clench my fists. “What did you do?”
He throws his hands in the air in a surrendering gesture. “I didn’t do anything, but the blonde sister was storming down the path toward Maeve’s bungalow when I was leaving. And she looked furious.”
“Fuck.”
Noah winces. “Yeah. Apparently, the eldest daughter ran away from home about five years ago. She’s on a shitlist. No money. No trust fund. And today is the first time she’s meeting them since she left.”
“What?” I rear back. “And her parents are just playing tennis?”
