Total pages in book: 23
Estimated words: 21386 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 107(@200wpm)___ 86(@250wpm)___ 71(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 21386 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 107(@200wpm)___ 86(@250wpm)___ 71(@300wpm)
What a fucking idiot.
I wanted to scream at him, to yank him up over the table by his fucking tie and tell him what a complete piece of shit he was. I wanted to tell him all about my family — the vapid, mostly drunk, social climber of a mom and the string of truly terrible boyfriends she’d had along the way. I wanted to tell him about learning to cook for myself at the age of seven because mom wasn’t going to. Or about learning how to fight when I was eight because her boyfriend at the time wanted to slap me around.
This guy had it great, and he’d let his own fucking ego burn the whole thing to the ground.
“I mean, fuck her, right? She was supposed to be out of town. She was supposed to be at her sister’s for Christ’s sake! Why the fuck did she come home early?”
“Intent for entrapment,” Johnson, one of Ken’s other shit-bag lawyers piped up. The rest of the room laughed.
Fuck these people.
The job at Price and Houghton had been too lucrative to say no to. Insane money, my own office, and enough big-time corporate cases to keep my name relevant, the headlines flowing, and my bank account full — all good things for a young lawyer. ‘Course, there were a few things I didn’t know when I took the job. One, that Price and Houghton made their fucking bread and butter defending pieces of shit like whatshisname here today. More than that, they excelled at not only defending these corporate crooks, but going after the people they’d hurt in the first place. Hell, they were already talking strategy on defaming this guy’s poor wife so he could screw her out the money that should have been hers.
“Channing.”
My eyes snapped up to Ken, his steely gray ones locked on mine.
“Any thoughts here, son?”
God fucking damnit, I hated when he said that.
Ken wasn’t my father, and I sure as shit wasn’t his son. But, that didn’t stop him from saying it every chance he got. That would be item number two that I didn’t know when I took the job — that Ken Price wasn’t just courting me for a job, he’d been courting my mother for a different position altogether.
Wife number two.
Yeah, Ken was my stepfather, as of nine months before.
I only had brief memories and a couple of photos of my real dad — a marine vet who’d made the mistake of getting mixed up with Catherine, my mother. Of course, Catherine hadn’t ever told me the real story, but I’d been in contact with an old platoon mate of my dad’s who had. Dad had gotten my mom pregnant, he’d married her, and they’d had three years with me. Then she went out and cheated on him with just about anything with a dick and a six-figure income, and divorced him.
Years later, here we were — me working my way through law school and the marines to get here, to where this asshole was calling me son.
Why did I stay? I mean, why stay working for a man I truly disliked who’d also married my mom? Well, you could say it was the money, but I knew there was more out there. I knew for a fact actually. So it wasn’t the job. It wasn’t my mother either, and it sure as fuck wasn’t Ken.
So, why did I stay? Why not take off and snag an interview at some other huge law firm across the country?
Well, it’s what came with Ken. Or rather, who. It was who was living in Ken’s house when he and mom had gotten married, and thank fuck, she’d turned eighteen the day before I met her.
Teasing, tempting, all-consuming.
Everly.
One look, in that restaurant where Ken and my mother had brought us all together to tell us the news, and I’d been hooked. Hopelessly ensnared. Perpetually hard as a rock. And turned right the fuck around.
There were so many red flags that it’d almost blinded me. She was barely eighteen. She was my boss’s daughter. She was my step-sister. So many neon warning signs and I’d ignored every one of them.
I tuned out the meeting again and reached into the back of my folder to pull out the letter.
The letter.
The one that was to me, but had clearly never been meant to actually get into my hands. Or maybe it had, and then her mind had changed.
I growled, my cock throbbing at the mere touch of it as my fingers traced the paper hers had. I wondered briefly if she’d touched herself while writing the dirty, filthy things on the page. I wondered if she’d played with what I could only imagine was the worlds tightest, pinkest, sweetest little pussy.
My pulse thundered as I brought the note to my face, as if it were part of the case being discussed, and I had to read some fine print.