Page 84 of My Brother's Billionaire Best Friends

I swallow. “Vivian…she helped me when no one else would. You know that. I didn’t just work my way up here—I started at the bottom. I didn’t evenhavea bottom. I was couch surfing at friends’ houses, family. I had nothing, outside of a scholarship to a prep school with no housing. Where I met you.”

Gavin doesn’t blink.

“You’re the one who told her about my living situation. The one who invited me to move in. And then she hired me. Gave me a job when I had no experience, no references, and no address of my own. Saw I had a head for numbers and pushed me into finance. Got me mentors. Sent me to training seminars I couldn’t afford. I owe her a debt of gratitude.” The words taste like rust. “But I owe you more.”

Still nothing. I keep going. “I owe youthis.All of this. What we built. You. Jack. Parker. Everything I care about now started with her handing me a chance and expecting me to outgrow it.”

Jack watches me, quiet now.

“She opened the door,” I say. “But you two—we—we built the damn house.” It’s the most I’ve said about this out loud. Ever.

And Gavin’s still not breathing right. He shakes his head again, slower now. “Which is why it doesn’t make sense. Why would she be involved with them? Why do this now?”

Jack exhales. “Maybe she wants back in. Maybe she wants to tank the current structure so she can ‘rescue’ it again. Or maybe she’s just sick of not being the queen.”

“She gave me the reins.”

“And she’s been yanking them back one strand at a time ever since,” Jack says.

“I need to talk to her,” Gavin mutters.

“Do you?” Jack challenges.

“She’ll have a reason.”

“You mean a story. An angle. Aspin.”

“She’s my mother.”

“And she wields your loyalty like a weapon. She always has.”

The silence after that is thicker. Harder. And I know—this is just the beginning.

“She’s my mother,” Gavin says again, his voice harder now. More brittle. Like repeating the words could change reality.

Jack’s eyes flash. “And what the hell does that have to do with the evidence?”

Gavin rounds on him. “Everything. You think I don’t know she’s capable of being manipulative? Of playing power games? That doesn’t mean she’s capable of funding a competitor to destroy her own company. It makes no sense.”

“Herformercompany,” Jack shoots back. “You think she still sees it as hers?”

“She passed it to me. It’s named for her initials—Vivian Thatcher Global is the legal name. Why would she trash the company?”

But Jack’s had it with his denial. “She passed you a grenade and waited to see when you’d blow yourself up.”

The words slap the air like a door slammed too hard.

Gavin stiffens. His mouth opens, then clamps shut again.

I take a step between them, palms out. “Hey. Let’s back it down.”

Neither of them does.

Gavin’s eyes narrow on Jack. “I don’t need to be lectured by you.”

Jack snaps, “Then listen to Harrison. You trusthim,right?”

Gavin’s jaw tightens. “Hesaton this.”