Page 23 of Bribed by the Billionaire Bad Boy

Or, I do, but I don’t care.

What kind of father expects their son toemailthem a life update every week anyway?

The older I get, the more I feel like a business investment.Thank goodness for him I was born before my mother went off and died. Going through the trouble of finding another wife who wouldn’t bother him for long so he could have an heir for this shiny business of his just seems like too much effort.

The anger pinches in my chest, and I’m not certain if it’s only anger now or not.

Whenever I think about my mother, the emotions that follow are too obscure to identify. I was too young to blame myself. I wasn’t naive enough to blame my father. It frustrates me more than anything.

The questions without answers.

The events without reasons.

Sometimes people justdie, and that is a terrifying thing to learn at ten.

I mutter a curse when I realize I’m not even looking at my phone anymore. The pictures are still sliding by, but I don’t know what they are. Sighing, I shut the stupid thing off and throw it on my bed, rubbing my eyes as I stand.

I can hear my father’s reprimands already.

We had an agreement.

Yeah. Anagreement.

I play the perfect role of the model son for a lifetime, and I get a taste of freedom before it all comes crashing down into the rigid outline my father made for me since before I was born. Raise a son. Teach him business. Force him to follow exactly in the same footsteps he has.

Sometimes, I’m not even sure we speak the same language. I don’t know how he expects me tobecomehim.

I blink out at the garden below my window and watch a squirrel launch itself from one tree into the boughs of another above our covered pool.

Calypsounderstands. She spends all her time blending into the background, watching, listening, learning. Entirely unboundand unbothered.

How unfair.

My phone rings, a silent hum of sequential buzzes that drag my attention but not my interest. I know it won’t be my sugar glider. She wouldn’t be reaching out, for starters, and if she had to, I know with somewhat pristine accuracy she’d agonize over every word in a text for ten minutes before daring to send it or talking herself out of it entirely.

With a sigh and a twinge of guilt at not entirely wanting to give my one friend the time of day, I trudge to the bed and pick up the phone.

“Lex!” Jason cheers, and I don’t know where he is, but it’s somewhereloud.

I wince as noise bombards me. “Yeah?”

“Come downtown!” His chipper tones aren’t lost in the cacophony.

“Why?” I ask all the same.

“Because,” he draws out the word, “it’s athing!”

How charmingly vague?

“Just trust me! I’ll be waiting by the fountain. You’ll have to park in that one big lot with the little mailbox for the money.”

I know what he’s talking about, but that is one heck of a way to describe it.

He continues, “They’ve got the roads blocked off and everything.” The way he says so makes it seem like it’s the fanciest thing to ever happen downtown. I know it happens at least several times a year. But, hey, he is a dorm kid.

I try to rack my brain and remember which event it is this time, but no name comes to mind. All the same, I let him know I’ll be there as soon as possible, then I hang up, walk through my vacant house, and make my way to the wide garage across from the path leading up to the mansion.

The distant rumble of lawnmowers permeates the silencethat accompanies my trek across the perfect grass, but I can’t help but feel like I’m all alone in the world.