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32.
Ryan
Ineed more space than the world can give me.
I basically go off-grid for three days as I try to come to terms with what my father did. Luckily for me, it’s a holiday weekend, so I don’t think anyone’s going to notice. Plot twist: everyone notices. When I turn my phone on Tuesday morning, I’m slammed with so many notifications that my phone jams.
Awesome.
I close my eyes, shower, get dressed, and decide to wade through my nightmare of emails at home before I head into the office. I’m halfway through when I get a call from Michael Gold, the investigator I hired so I could try to impress Alex.
Not that it’s working.
I hate that I’m falling head-over-heels for her.
“What did you find?”
“A list of kids,” he says.
“And?”
“Names, addresses, records. Everything was buried, but nothing is buried for long when I’m around.”
“I’m already paying you,” I remind him. “I don’t need you to sell your services.”
“I’ll send you what I’ve got,” he says. “The invoice will be coming, too.”
“Great.”
I end the call. I don’t want to be besties with Michael. What I want is to get answers, and what I want is to move on, hopefully permanently.
Only, as soon as the call ends, my phone rings again.
Megan.
My ex-stepmother, and one of my father’s favorite wives. She’s calling me because she wants to talk, because she misses my dad.
Or is she calling because she wants information?
Megan and I don’t talk much. Our interactions tend to be cursory and to-the-point. Only, today, she seems like she’s fishing for something.
“How’s everything going?”
“Fine, Megan. What do you want?”
“Is that any way to talk to your stepmother?”
“You’re not my real mom,” I say in a playful voice, but I mean it. I’m not being playful at all. Megan and I have never gotten along. As soon as my dad married her, I knew it would be a match made in hell. She’s conniving and vicious. She’s almost as terrible as her bratty younger sister, Elizabeth.
Only, Elizabeth has basically stayed out of the spotlight and out of my life since Megan and Dad’s wedding day. I’ve only thought about her in passing during the briefest of moments.
“We need to talk about the dissolution of assets between several of our companies,” she says, spitting out the real reason she’s calling. No offense to Megan, but she’s never been smart enough to talk like that.
“Meaning?”
