AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter 1
Cotter – (Two Years Later)~
Though my job was very fucking demanding, it wasn’t hard. Unlike Cutter, I didn’t have to juggle an entire company, making sure that everyone kept prospering. As CFO of Moore Industries, all I had to do was make sure that the numbers added up, and nothing was simpler than math. Math was the only thing that was culturally diverse. Yeah, I had a shitload of numbers that I needed to keep straight, but I was lucky enough to have the intelligence to make that happen.
I was also lucky that my father, Phineas Moore II, had been okay with giving up the reins to his beloved Moore Industries, entrusting it to me and my brother, Cutter. Dad was only seventy-two years old, but my older brother, Phineas III, had given him enough grandchildren to keep him occupied and out of our hair for the time being.
In all actuality, Phin was my half-brother while Cutter was my twin. After Dad had lost his first wife, Rita, he had ended up marrying my mother, Candy, not even a year later, and it had eventually come out that their marriage had been nothing but a business arrangement. Though not right, that had explained a lot of our childhood neglect, and it had also explained how Cutter and I had come to be. We hadn’t been planned, but that hadn’t stopped Phin from trying to be the best brother to us, despite the huge age difference and Phin off at boarding school.
At any rate, when Cutter and I had been fourteen, Phin and his wife, Sheridan, had taken custody of us, and both our parents had let them. Regardless of how Candy felt about it, Cutter and I called Sheridan by Mom, and though it had started out as a joke, it’d felt right enough to keep calling her that. Even when Sheridan and Phin had started having kids of their own, we hadn’t been shoved aside. I was thirty-four, and I still called Sheridan Mom, both Cutter and I did.
I also liked to take credit for my older brother’s marriage, something that annoyed the hell out of him. Sheridan had been mine and Cutter’s freshman year teacher, and I liked to tease him about how he never would have reconnected with Sheridan if it hadn’t been for us. In turn, Phin liked to remind me that we had almost cost him the woman that he loved with all our teenage evil ways. Sheridan had once described us as diabolical, calculating, clever masterminds, and she hadn’t been far off. Our intelligence level and unlimited wealth had made us hard to deal with during our younger years. Luckily, Phin and Sheridan hadn’t given up on us, and whatever good that we had in our hearts, it was because of Sheridan. In all honesty, since Phin had been raised by the same father as we’d had…well, let’s just say that Sheridan had definitely earned her place in Heaven.
Now, while there were a lot of rumors floating around about twins, Cutter and I were on a different level. While we couldn’t actually read each other’s thoughts, our bond was enough that we might as well be able to. It was one of the reasons why we worked so well together. Cutter and I were two parts to the same machine, and that machine just happened to be Moore Industries. Though the company had started out dealing in renewable energy sources only, once Cutter and I had come onboard…well, there wasn’t any money exchanging hands in this economy that we weren’t a part of.
When Phin had made it clear that he’d had no interest in inheriting Moore Industries, Dad had invested all his knowledge and time into making sure that Cutter and I were capable of taking over one day. Though he had started grooming us at a very young age, it hadn’t been until our junior year in college that he had actually had us interning at the offices. By the time that we’d graduated from college, there hadn’t been a whole lot more to learn about Moore Industries. Of course, with our reputations, Dad’s main concern had been our maturity, and no one could blame him.
We’d been awful little shits back then.
Nowadays, Cutter was the respectable CEO of Moore Industries, I was the CFO, Dad was semi-retired, and Candy was still doing the socialite thing. As for Phin, after retiring from snowboarding, he’d done the whole spokesperson thing, modeled some, and had done some sports commentating before hanging it all up to be a stay-at-home-dad. Between being smart enough to keep an eye on his money and all his shares in Moore Industries, the last thing that he needed was more money. He was also a stay-at-home-dad, so that Mom could still do what she loved, and that was teaching science at Seeland Prep, the place where she’d fallen in love with us enough to give Phin a second chance at romance.
At least, that’s how I told the story.
All in all, though we’d all had some struggles during our younger years, it couldn’t be argued that we were better people for it now. Though neglect should never be in any parent’s repertoire, it sure as fuck taught you how to survive when shit hit the fan.
Honestly, I had no complaints. No matter what, life always gave us a choice, and though that choice might be between a sword or an ax, you still had a choice, and I’d made mine. I had chosen this life, and at thirty-four, I was one of the youngest billionaires on the planet, so I’d say that I’d chosen well when I’d decided to sacrifice for what I had now.
Now, up until recently, Cutter had done the same. However, nowadays, he was doing his best to balance work with his love for Merritt, and if you asked me, it wasn’t working. Merritt was his personal assistant, and though he’d fallen for her the second that he had laid eyes on her, she’d been engaged, so Cutter had left her alone. However, the second that she had called off her engagement, Cutter had gone in for the kill, and now they were engaged and screwing in his office every chance that they got. Luckily, all the employees appreciated the softer side of Cutter Moore, so no one was reporting them for their obvious lack of respect for our sexual harassment policies.
I was also very happy for my brother. It’d been hard to see him be in love with someone that had belonged to someone else, and with our parents track record of cheating on each other, going after a taken woman had never crossed Cutter’s mind, no matter how much he’d fallen for Merritt.
A knock on my door had me looking up from my desk, saying, “Come in.”
The door opened, and my assistant, Sumner Bristol, came walking in, the only person outside my family that could knock without an appointment. Sumner was thirty-years-old, six-foot, and slim enough to make me wonder if he ever ate. His dark brown hair and eyes also stood out against his pale skin, and he kind of reminded me of those emo kids way back in the day. Nevertheless, the man had a brilliant mind and was more organized than a military general.
“Holden Britton wants to change your meeting today from his office to Rouche,” he announced. “Apparently, he has another appointment immediately after yours, and he’ll be late if he doesn’t cut the distance from his office to his next meeting.”
“I have no problem with that.”
Sumner eyed me. “Really?”
I leaned back in my chair, and this was precisely why Cutter didn’t care for my assistant. Though brilliant, Sumner forgot his place a lot. While it didn’t bother me because we both knew who was boss, his mannerism could reek of insubordination, and Cutter wasn’t a fan of that. It was funny, because lots of people thought that Cutter was the more easygoing one out of the both of us, but that wasn’t true. The truth was that neither Cutter nor I were easygoing. I just didn’t give a fuck a little less than Cutter did.
“If you have to drive all the way downtown to Rouche, then that will make you late for your one o’clock with Harold Croupe.”
“That’d be true if Harold hadn’t called me this morning to reschedule our meeting,” I informed him.
Sumner gasped.
He gasped, and I couldn’t even blame his theatrics on the stereotypical assumptions that all male assistants were gay or that all gay men were dramatic. Sumner was very straight and very committed to his girlfriend of three years.
So, nope.
The dude was just a lot.
“Everyone knows that they’re supposed to contact me for anything that has to do with your schedule,” he huffed.
“Would you like me to call Harold back and tell him that he needs to call you first before I can agree to his request?” I asked dryly.
