Chapter 9
Bronte
Meirna Elise Stetson.
Twenty-nine years old, works at Prestigious PR while building and creating a non-profit organization for senior-assisted living homes.
Light brown curls, beautiful honey-brown eyes, and freckles.
Those fucking alluring and perfect freckles.
She hates dark chocolate, loves binging Gilmore Girls and crime docuseries on Netflix, and has a sweet tooth.
She loves Christmas.
It’s her favorite holiday.
Baking cookies is a one-time deal during the year, and that’s around this time. Everything Christmas is everything Meirna.
It’s also my favorite time of the year, too.
But for other reasons.
Meirna also looks fucking amazing in white. I learned that ten times since knowing her, each time we met…she had it on five of those times.
The way the story goes…she met me first. I was the one she was searching for. I was the man who helped her pick up mulch and hand-deliver it where she wanted.
I wouldn’t allow her to pick up another bag.
Not because I didn’t think she could, but because I wanted to stay longer.
Not that it was long.
I was graced with about twenty-five minutes of her time, and I wanted more. But I was called away on an emergency with my father—my adopted father—and had to run, hoping I could figure out who she was and plan a second meeting.
Meirna beat me to it.
But she got the wrong guy.
When I discovered six months later who Meirna was—thanks to an Instagram post that went viral because she was with Bobby—I realized how shit went awry.
I was going to leave it be.
Meirna was a grown woman; she would soon find out that Bobby and I aren’t the same.
Not by a long shot.
But she didn’t. And, what makes matters worse, my parents helped.
You see, Bobby—my younger, worthless brother—likes to fuck. But he doesn’t like to fuck just anything, he loves to fuck married women, girls barely eighteen, and he even has his regular, Jolene, who he screwed every Friday night while delivering Meirna the line of “another late night”.
Not only has he cheated on Meirna more times than I’m probably aware—doesn’t matter and don’t care to know the number—I wasn’t going to stand idly by and allow the woman I wanted to fuck marry into the Harding family under the guise of perfection.
Nothing about the Hardings is perfect.
They’re con artists.
They cheat and lie.
Meirna is the poster child of the normalcy they needed to give Bobby so that the Board to my father’s hedge fund company would take him seriously.
She’s a means to an end.
Mine.
Not his.
Not only does Bobby cheat on my now-wife, but all the money he’s helped her gather for her non-profits is mob money.
Mob money he can’t pay back.
Mob money that’s going to get Meirna either killed or thrown into a position she has no way of getting out of.
That wasn’t going to happen.
Not when I saw her first.
Not when Bobby took something that belonged to me—again.
And, moral or not, I married Meirna Stetson so that Bobby couldn’t dig his hooks into her and because I wanted to finally take something he thought was his.
Just like Harding Holdings.
I was born first, bred in expensive schools, and spoke Greek and Latin fluently before I turned ten. Bobby and I were set up, not to love each other because that’s a weakness, but to compete against each other.
Not only should my parents have never been allowed to have children, but two at the same time was a fucking game.
A game that never ended, there were no period breaks or halftimes.
It was Bobby and I at each other’s throats for as long as I can remember.
“Did you need anything else, sir?”
I shake my head, still looking at Meirna sprawled along the California king bed of the suite I booked us for our honeymoon.
She’ll hate me for a while for this.
But, in the long run, she liked me first. She wanted me first. And she had me first.
Alexander, my head of security, softly closes the door behind him and gives me privacy to deal with the long and winding road that is my wife.
Like I said…she’s going to fight me like hell for this.
Thank God, that’s all I’ve done, and I love a good brawl.
Especially when it’s sexy as fuck and I want to lose myself and my entirety in it.
Approaching the wet bar, I pour myself whatever brandy is in the room. For over two thousand dollars a night, it better be top-notch shit, or I’m going to send Alexander out on an errand.
Meanwhile, I hate not knowing which way this is going to go. I plan for everything in my life. I know every move I’m going to make and the outcomes of said actions.
But Meirna is someone I only know just beneath surface level. There are some small things I’ve picked up when we’ve been together, but nothing compared to my brother.
And that alone pisses me off.
Taking a generous sip of the golden liquid, I welcome the floral burn that hits the back of my throat and stride toward the French doors leading out to the Vltava River.
I picked this place out just for her.
All for her.
The intimate wedding, getting her away from the lavish atrocity my mother was planning to show her off as a baby-making machine that was going to shut up and have no say.
I know how it feels to be silenced by that family.
And Meirna is so much more than a pretty face and a heart of a saint.
She’s kindness.
She’s a breath of fresh air in this world of greed and unethical morals.
Not that I fall far from that tree.
However, I’d save her from anyone or anything that tried to destroy her. And that includes my own family.
The winter breeze hits my face as I step outside, just as I hear the faint patter of something racing across the hardwood floors.
Glancing over my shoulder, Meirna is in the middle of sprinting toward the door. Her brown curls bounce aimlessly against her shoulders and back when she yanks open the door, just to find Alexander in her wake.
“Please move,” she pants, trying to make a move to go around him, but he’s too damn big and knows too damn well she’s not going anywhere.
Instead of answering her verbally, Alexander reaches inside the room, grabs the doorknob, and slowly closes the door softly in her face.
Her reality is coming to a full head because she’s not leaving me. Not until I can ensure her safety.
And, even then…if I’m being totally honest with myself…I don’t foresee myself letting her go at all.
“Come see the Vltava River, Meirna,” I urge gently, trying not to spook her but fooling myself because this is all new and fresh to her.
It’s all old news to me.
“I need to leave,” I hear her utter underneath her breath, not bothering to turn around to face me, nor giving in to the fact that she wanted to be here.
But with Bobby.
It takes everything in me not to dwell on my dick being inside her earlier and my brother’s name, a breathy moan off her lips. Where she said she loved him when I was balls deep inside her, about to lose my fucking mind.
I’m only a man with limited patience and even less tolerance for bullshit. What she sees in my brother is beyond my comprehension, but I’m a betting man who says she won’t be a fan by week’s end.
“You have questions,” I quip to her. “You want to know why. You wish to know why I would do such a thing when you’re already engaged to my brother of all people, and what for? You think we’ve never met, but indeed, Daydream, we met. And we met first.”
Slowly, she turns around, donned in a simple pink little number that does nothing but send my imagination a hundred different ways of how I could rip that dress and have her scream the correct name.
But I rein it in.
I know her as her.
Meirna doesn’t know me as me.
“The Stonehaven Tree planting was where we first met,” I impart to fill in the silence and her racing mind.
“You dropped a bag of red mulch. You looked at me from underneath those long eyelashes, thanked me, and I carried every single one of those bags for you that day. Eighteen. We shared a water bottle, and you coerced me to drink some because you said I was dehydrated and couldn’t afford a passed-out body.
That you needed the landscaping done, not have females fawning over me. I meant to—”
“How do I know Bobby didn’t give you this information?”
She scowls at me. Her body is heaving in uneven breaths because her adrenaline is pumping, and she’s in a room with a strange man.
A man who almost looks exactly like Bobby.
Except I have darker hair and lighter green eyes.
I’m aware she didn’t mean to call me anything but a fake, but it’s a low blow. I am nothing like Bobby. Even though Meirna and I had short periods of time together, I’m in awe that she never put two and two together.
“I haven’t been in New York society since I was sixteen.”
“So?”
“So, I’m going to take a shot in the dark and say no one has mentioned me.”
Meirna presses her lips together, then huffs, “No. They haven’t.”
She takes a step forward, showing that she’s not scared of me.
But she’s about to be.
“I could almost blame myself for you lasting as long as you did with my brother,” I convey evenly. “You did always like me better, Daydream.”
“What does that you even mean?”
“I think that’s enough storytime for one—”
“I want to go home.”
Knew she’d say that.
It’s a typical response when someone doesn’t want to mentally deal with something and goes on the retreat.
Too bad that’s not happening.
“I’ll give you space, Meirna,” I hedge. “But you’re not going anywhere without me. You’re my wife. I take that role very seriously.”
“Why?” she balks. “Because you trick women into marrying you, and this is some sick hobby—”
“Just you.”
Her eyes widen before they narrow into judgy slits. “You’re going to take me home, whatever your name is, and you’re going to do it now.”
That may have worked for Bobby, but that shit is falling on deaf ears.
No one tells me how things are going to go.
“It’s Bronte,” I convey simply, even though I can feel the tick in my impatience starting to break from its seams. “And, we’re on our honeymoon. We’re also behind schedule.”
Meirna’s expression twists like I’m some slow douchebag that needs to kidnap women to nab attention.
She can ask Bobby—since we’re fucking identical twins, after all—I don’t crave attention. I loathe it.
But he loves it.
I mean, shit, Meirna hunted his ass down and, while Bobby might be an attention whore, I’ve never needed women to stroke my ego.
My cock speaks for itself.
“I don’t know you,” Meirna continues to argue, swinging in a fight she’s never going to win. “And this is—this is Twilight Zone kind of shit. A felony.” My eyes roll because it’s not shit compared to my family. “This isn’t funny, Bronte.”
Mhm, there it is.
My name finally off those pretty little lips of hers.
It triggers the start of everything I am and everything Bobby’s not. The truth in groves and all the things I’ve done for her so that she doesn’t get buried alive by my sperm donor, my vindictive mother, and my sloppy brother.
Meirna Stetson just fucked up.
Because I’m going all out on every secret that will turn her toward me.
“A felony is taking dirty money and scamming your investors,” I reply.
“You’re welcome, Meirna. Because I just saved you from the reprehensible Hardings so you can continue your non-profits and help the community you so love.
So that you have a life and a name still, that’s not linked to the soon-to-be downfall of my old family.
I know you’ve done zero research on your ex-fiancé.
Harding Holdings is tanking. And Bobby was the plan to save it.
You…you were to save face.” I pluck her cell phone out of my back pocket and aimlessly toss it in the air toward her.
She catches it, barely, almost permitting it to fall to the floor, but she’s quick to retrieve it into her tight clutches. “Look it up.”
Meirna doesn’t move to do just that. She just continues to stare at me like the so-called stranger I am.
“Don’t mistake the use of your cell phone and get on my bad side, Meirna. I’m ruthless when I get mad. I wouldn’t want our honeymoon to involve me restricting you to this room when I have a whole plan to take you everywhere. We’re in Prague…I want you to enjoy it.”
Her nostrils flare when I notice tears swelling and glossing along her eyes.
I immediately don’t like that.
So much so that I step forward to erase the space between us, but I don’t touch her. She’s not ready to be touched by any man whose name isn’t known as Bobby.
“Tell me, Daydream…when you so-called looked me up. What was the first thing you came across with Bobby’s name?”
A response doesn’t freely come from her lips, but I don’t need it. I already know.
Philanderer.
Womanizer.
Romeo the Rich Rake.
Playboy.
Bobby has fucked his way through Harvard, our father’s office, and Meirna.
Meirna.
“We have dinner reservations at seven,” I digress through her closed-lipped reply. “Wear something you’d wear for Bobby. We obviously have the same taste in women.”