Page 15 of Secret Revenge

“Will do,” I murmured. “They probably are.”

I drove the rest of the way silently with my thoughts. When we arrived at the villa my younger brothers were standing outside, waiting for us.

“Welcome cousins,” Jackson said, opening his arms to offer Alexi and Leo a hug.

“Good God, did you get even bigger? What are you eating?” Alexi exclaimed as he hugged my beefy youngest brother.

Alexi was tall and muscular himself, but he was right… Jackson was the biggest of us. He was ex-military and we joked that it was why he was built like a tank. His muscles were massive, and he even towered over me. He ventured into privatesecurity after leaving the military, and he now handled that aspect of the conglomerate.

Jackson was also the scarier looking brother. His hair was close-shaven, and his eyebrows always sat low over his blue eyes. He didn’t look like he had ever left the military.

“Looks like he’s been eating Brendan’s share,” Leo grumbled.

“Ha. Ha. You’re so funny,” Brendan dead-panned.

The rest of us had to laugh. Brendan was on the leaner side, and he was also the shortest at 6’2. He worked out just enough to maintain his body, but most of the time, he was in front of a screen. That was why he kept his hair long. So he could cut it less. It was also why he wore glasses.

“This is the most sunlight he’s gotten all week,” I joked.

“Can we just go inside?” Brendan raised his hands in surrender as he headed in ahead of us. “Everyone’s always dissing the tech guy.”

Our collective laughter filled the air as we went in.

7

EMILY

Iwoke up once again with sun on my face. I had forgotten to close my curtains. I had to admit that did work as a good alarm to wake me up. But it also reminded me how good it had felt to wake up in bed beside Travis Ross.

I opened my eyes, glaring at the window like it had betrayed me and groaning when the sun shone even brighter into my eyes. My bed was not comfortable enough to tempt me to go back to sleep.

I let my eyes get reacquainted with the room and looked up at the faintly cracked paint on the ceiling, then at all my belongings piled up in the corner.

I lived in a one-bedroom apartment that did not afford me much space, so I had given up on getting proper storage furniture. My apartment was barely the size of the bathroom at Travis Ross’s penthouse.

I kicked off the scratchy covers and lay down, exhausted from the effort it took. This had been the state of my living arrangements since I chose to become a freelance journalist after leaving college.

Not many people realized that, even when I got my picture plastered all over the place, I didn’t get paid very much for my work. Few publications wanted to hire a journalist who cared more about her ideas of truth and justice than about what was profitable to write.

The one thing independent journalism offered me was the ability to work on any case I wanted to, instead of sitting in an office where I would be forced to drop a case because my superiors said so or not even be allowed to look into it because they believed my claims to be farfetched.

The sound of my alarm beeping reached my ears. I had woken up before it went off because of the sunlight streaming in. I reached out to turn it off, sighed, and sat up. I couldn’t lie here all day feeling sorry for myself. That wouldn’t help with the money problemorthe truth and justice problem.

I picked up my phone, unlocked it and noticed a text from my mother. My heart ached as I read her message telling me I did not have to worry myself about my father’s hospital bill and I should not let it burden me.

I’ll find a way to take care of it, her message read.I always do. I love you.

I dropped the phone on the bed beside me and ran my hand up my face. How could I not be burdened by it? How could I leave my parents to figure it out for themselves, knowing how they’d been struggling for fifteen years?

After my father had begun to break down and started losing himself in the bottle to forget his sorrows, my mother had to get a job so she could take care of us. Unfortunately, my father simply could not find the will to carry on trying any longer.

We’d thought he would bounce back from being forced to sell the business, he’d spent his life building, to Ross Industries for next to nothing during the financial crash. It had been the only way to save our house and avoid ending up homeless witha child. But it seemed like losing his life’s work in such an unfair way had broken my father. The old him had been lost somewhere and he did not seem willing to get him back.

He never tried to look for a job to assist my mother, he simply drank and did nothing except mourn his loss. By the time I was in high school, the cirrhosis had begun to creep up on him. While I was in college, it had finally killed him—but not before leaving my mother under a mountain of medical debt.

My mother had done all she could to keep us from falling into poverty while my dad squandered the little that she brought in. She had never lost hope that he would recover.

When he had died, my mom had grieved for him, for the man she had hoped would make a comeback, but I was relieved. I could never tell if she knew how relieved I was, but whenever I tried to console her, she would always give me a knowing look. I had never been able to shake off the feeling that she knew how I felt about him dying.