Page 11 of My Brother's Billionaire Best Friends

The breath leaves me like a shot.

“Excuse me?”

“I’ve seen the blogs.”

“Then you know there’s no video. Just vague audio, barely audible at that.”

“There doesn’t need to be video, Gavin. People will believe what they want.”

“Then they’ll believe what I tell them. Isn’t that the job of a public relations expert?”

She laughs, dry and humorless. “Oh, sweetheart. That’s not how this works. You don’t control the narrative anymore.”

“I control this company.”

“You think the board will protect you? When will you learn from your father’s mistakes?”

I go still. “That’s low.”

“I’m trying to protect you.”

“By implying I’m on the same path as my father?”

“He made one mistake, and it snowballed into twenty.”

“I am not him.” I don’t mean to growl the words.

“You are your father’s son.”

“No. I am mymother’sson. The one who learned to double-check every door for cameras and every room for whispers. The one who built this company with you breathing down his neck. And the one who’s still doubling profits despite having to carry your legacy on his back.”

She’s quiet again. That unnerves me more than the yelling ever could. “I stepped back so you could take this company forward,”she says, softly now. “But I didn’t step away so you could burn it down.”

“I’m not burning anything,” I say. “I’m keeping it alive. You may have created VT, but I evolved it.”

“Evolved it into what?”

“A place where we work with people like Parker Simon.”

There’s a pause, just before she hangs up. “My gut is never wrong.”

“Maybe your gut is just scared of being irrelevant.” I tap end call before she can say anything else she shouldn’t.

The silence that follows is heavy. Not peaceful. Not cleansing. Just empty.

I lean back in my chair and stare at the ceiling, resisting the urge to throw something. I used to think I’d stop craving her approval once I got the CEO title. But I was wrong. The craving doesn’t stop—it just gets buried deeper, disguised by paychecks and press releases and quarterly wins that never feel like enough.

I rub a hand across my mouth, forcing the tension from my jaw.

Parker. The name slides into my mind before I can stop it. She’s not a kid anymore. Not the nerdy girl who hovered at the edge of every room, clutching a book and glancing around like she didn’t belong. She’s grown into something precise. Polished. Pretty in a way that makes men forget what room they’re standing in.

And I’ve done everything I can to avoid her.

I gave her to Jack and Harrison. Not as an insult, not even as a test. Just…distance. She’s better off in their departments. Safer. Away from me. Away from the part of me that remembers whatshe looked like in that elevator—pressed between three bodies and loving every second.

And what she sounded like when she moaned my name. God, I can still hear it.

Yes, technically she’smynew assistant, not theirs, but if I don’t keep her at a distance, this will blow up in our faces. I push back from my desk and stand, trying to work the tension from my shoulders.