Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 75783 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75783 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
Dawson
I spent the last year of my life in Europe overseeing and growing my company into a billion-dollar empire. I come home expecting a celebration, but instead my father tells me I have a new stepsister, and she is going to be my new assistant.
Harper isn’t just unqualified, she is a curvy distraction I can’t afford. She pushes all of my buttons, and I’ll push hers right back. She doesn't know what she is getting herself into.
Harper
All I want is to go to art school, but instead, I’m forced to work as an assistant for my new bully stepbrother. I’m supposed to be at his disposal twenty-four hours a day. But if he thinks he can boss me around all the time, he has something else coming.
My feistiness quickly fades when I realize that not all of Dawson’s businesses are legitimate and that my new stepbrother has a dark side I’m not prepared to handle. Can I untangle myself from the web I’m in before it’s too late?
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
Chapter 1
Dawson
Some things never change. Death and taxes. Having entrees show up at the table as soon as you make it to the bathroom. The scent of bullshit in the air as soon as I cross through the front gate of my father’s estate.
It gets stronger once my driver has pulled up in front of the imposing front porch, set atop a set of wide, brick steps. “Welcome back, Mr. Price.” A kid who doesn’t look like he’s old enough to shave gives me a wide smile after opening my car door so I can step out onto the circular courtyard at the base of the steps. “You’re looking well.”
I’m sure I’ve never set eyes on him, and vice versa, but he talks to me like we’re old friends because that’s what he’s paid to do. To serve and to kiss ass.
I’m not like my dad. I don’t appreciate too much ass kissing. “You should see me on a good day,” I murmur, nodding toward the pair of guards flanking the double front door under a sloping porch overhang. Them, I recognize. When Dad finds trustworthy people, he doesn’t let them go.
He is who I’ve come to see. My first visit to the house since flying in after a year overseas. I suppose a year isn’t long enough for any real change to take place. The inside of the house hasn’t changed at all, even if Dad is no longer the only person living here besides the full-time staff who have their own rooms downstairs. The gold digger Dad married six months ago hasn’t wreaked havoc yet, but I got the feeling it’s only a matter of time before her tacky taste infects the estate’s old-school grandeur.
She must be around here somewhere. Probably sleeping at nine in the morning. Trophy wives don’t get out of bed before eleven at the earliest. I’m sure she figures now that her acting career has dried up—what little there was—she deserves a rest. The thought of a gold digger getting her hands on what Mom poured her attention and love into is a lump of burning coal eating a hole in my gut.
“Is that my son?” I’m halfway down the hall leading through the east wing when Dad’s voice booms out. When I was a kid, I really believed he had eyes everywhere. I was too young to notice the cameras placed throughout the house. I’m sure he has the feed pulled up on his laptop, anticipating my arrival.
Rounding the doorframe of his study, I find him sitting behind his desk, surrounded by his collection of memories. Souvenirs from trips around the world, rare books he tracked down and paid fuck only knows how much for.
For the first time, I spot a glaring difference in the décor. Instead of the row of old photos sitting in silver frames on the credenza behind him, Dad now displays six months’ worth of photos of him and his new wife. For fifteen years, he’s chosen to memorialize my late mother, and it took all of six months to wipe her out. Instead of Mom’s soft, dark curls and gentle smile, a plastic-faced woman with bleached hair and an almost-orange tan beams cheesily at me.
“I see you enjoyed your honeymoon,” I murmur, studying the photos after shaking his hand. Shots of Dad and Diana on a tropical beach, in front of the Taj Mahal, even on top of the Eiffel Tower with Paris spread out behind them.
“Diana had never traveled extensively. It was gratifying, sharing the experience with her.” Right, and I’m sure it was gratifying when she sucked his dick once they got back to the hotel. There’s no way this relationship is built on anything real. It’s a transaction, pure and simple, the way it was with Diana’s previous three husbands. If Dad thinks I didn’t look her up the minute he told me her name, he’s never known the first thing about me.
Really, would that be a surprise?
The thing is, if he didn’t look so damn happy in those pictures, I might throw it all in his face. Her divorces, the allegations her ex-husbands made. Infidelity being the chief point, of course. Their relationship is still new enough that she’ll be a good girl for a while—I’m sure she’s learned a thing or two by now about discretion.
“And where is the wife?” I ask, looking over Dad’s shoulder out the windows behind the desk, where the pool sparkles. “I figured she would be outside on a beautiful day, getting some sun.”
“She’s not the early riser we are,” he explains, and his voice drips with indulgence that sets my teeth on edge. “I didn’t ask you to come in to meet her, anyway. There are bigger issues we need to discuss.”
If anything, I’m glad. Business, I can handle. “Let’s hear it.”