Chapter 13
WREN
D arcy sends me home after breakfast because he still won’t get with the idea that billionaires don’t have to wear suits to work anymore, but I also might agree with him when it comes to wearing his too-tight sweats and T-shirt.
Even the guys on a construction site would shake their heads at that.
So even though the office is right near Darcy’s place, I schlep it home in an Uber, get dressed, and then catch a ride with Remy back to my work truck where I left it at the bar last night.
On the way to my truck, Remy’s stare burns into me, even though he should be focused on the road.
“You’re not going to tell me where you were all night?”
“Brotherly bondage.” The wince after I say that is completely involuntary as I’m reminded of my fleeting thoughts of how hot my brother is. “Bonding. Bonding . I mean bonding.” I shudder.
“Brotherly bondage. Can’t say I’m surprised.” He smirks like he’s having his own private joke.
“Huh?”
“When you two met, or when he came to our place at least, and I thought you two were sleeping together, there were total vibes.”
I screw up my face. “Please. Stop.”
“Let me finish. Afterward, I did some googling and also talked to my therapist?—”
“About me and my brother?” What the actual fuck?
“No, I was curious. Our family has always been small, and so you having all these siblings got in my head, even though they have nothing to do with me. My point is I looked some stuff up. Did you know it’s actually common for siblings who were not raised together to fall in love?
It’s something about mistaking the familial connection for a romantic one. ”
“Can you leave me and my brothers out of whatever sick fantasies you’re having, please?” Or maybe keep talking so I don’t feel like a degenerate creeper for feeling mild attraction to certain things Darcy said and did last night.
This morning, it was better, but I wouldn’t say back to normal.
The way he told me to cover up was cute.
“That’s so cute” almost fell out of my mouth, and I have no idea where it even came from.
I couldn’t help thinking he wanted me to put on clothes so he didn’t have to stare at all my bare skin.
He might seem like a prude, but I know for a fact he’s not prudish.
Why am I still thinking about this?
I shake it off.
“I’m just saying,” Remy continues. “If you were attracted to your brother, I wouldn’t judge you for it. Or blame you. He’s hot.”
I cock my brow at him.
“Don’t worry, cuz. I’m head over heels for my own man I can’t have. Hence the therapy.”
Yes, let’s get off the topic of me and onto his fucked-up love life. Remy went through some heavy shit with his ex, and while he found a great guy in Sanden, his issues go too deep for them to properly start something healthy.
Coming from me, the poster boy of healthy relationships.
But our cousin time is up. He pulls in next to my truck, and I get out, but before I shut the door again, I say, “Thanks for having a very weird talk with me about brothers having sex. All I can say is it’s lucky you’re an only child.”
I close the door but still hear him call after me.
“That I know of! Where are my rich half brothers offering me the world?”
I snort and shake my head, but as I drive toward the office, I can’t help rethinking his words.
Remy sees it as the Ritchersons offering me the world, but the way Darcy words it, it’s as if he thinks he’s offering me what I deserve. And that maybe he doesn’t believe he deserves it at all.
Which doesn’t make sense. Because by birthright, it’s all his.
Unless … Unless he truly does think Warren should have chosen my mother over his.
Is that why he works himself so hard? Trying to prove to the world, to himself, and to our father that Warren chose right?
It has to be a lot of pressure, and I can’t believe he hasn’t broken down by now.
Yet, something else niggles at me too. Him telling me he wishes he could tell me the truth. He says I imagined it, and that’s plausible. I was drunk, and this morning when I woke up, it did feel like a dream, but as the minutes and hours tick by, I’m more convinced that it happened.
And if that’s the case, what is he hiding from me? Is it possible I’m not the biggest Ritcherson family secret?
Who knows, maybe we have another brother out there somewhere. Someone older than even Darcy. Maybe Darcy knows he’s not the rightful heir because another Warren is out there walking around oblivious.
Hmm, nah, that can’t be it. Why would Warren want to reconcile with me but not someone else who shares his DNA?
Ooh, what if Fiona lied about Darcy’s birth date, and he’s actually younger than me? I wouldn’t put it past her. It would explain why Darcy doesn’t feel like he deserves the company. Why he’s been so nice to me from the beginning.
While suspicion lingers, I tell myself that I’m reading into things too much and try to forget it.
I grab coffee at the café opposite the office building, ordering Darcy his usual because I’m sure he came into work the second I left his place this morning and he’s elbow-deep in everything he missed yesterday.
He wouldn’t have thought to grab coffee himself.
He usually sends someone out to get it for him.
See, he is capable of delegating, but I hope he can find something to delegate to me to make his life easier.
At least while I’m learning everything. It hasn’t been long, and I’m still not sure about taking a permanent role with MediaCorp—maybe I’ll go back to my construction job after the three months, maybe I won’t—but my desire to be here has already grown.
I went from curious outsider to mildly interested outsider, and it all has to do with Darcy. Hell, I’m on the brink of believing I deserve everything he’s offering me.
It’s unsteady though, wishy-washy. My brain is easily swayed, easy to think the worst of everyone, and when I enter Darcy’s office and find Tobias behind the computer instead, it all comes crashing down.
“Where’s Darcy?” I ask.
“London. Well, on his way. He’s probably somewhere over the Dakotas right now.”
I take out my phone from my pocket to see if he gave me any kind of heads-up, but no. He didn’t. “He didn’t tell me.”
“It was a last-minute thing. He called me to ask to take over training you.”
I eye my youngest brother, who looks all of twenty-two. “You? Aren’t you still in college or whatever?”
“Business school.” He cocks his head. “Tell me. Where did you get your MBA? Oh, wait …”
“Considering you don’t have yours yet, I’d say we’re on an even playing field.”
He levels me with a look that’s so telling I don’t even need to hear what he’s going to say. But he says it anyway. “We will never be on an even playing field.”
“Because I don’t belong here? Is that what Junior is telling you? Are you really that easily swayed by him?”
The quick uncertainty in his eyes lets me know I’ve hit the nail on the head. The way Tobias has always looked to Junior for direction in the brief moments I’ve had with them, the following Junior’s lead …
“You know, I get the impression that Junior makes all your decisions for you. Did he give you permission to train me? I’d think that’s risky. What if—” I mock gasp. “What if you gave me an actual chance and liked me? The horror!”
His jaw hardens again, reminding me so much of Junior’s pissed-off face. Which is actually his usual face. Do I look like that when I’m angry?
“That will never happen,” Tobias says through gritted teeth.
“Mm, sounds like a challenge to me. Let’s begin today’s lesson with something I call an olive branch. Here is a coffee I got specially for my brother.” I hold out Darcy’s cup.
“You didn’t even know I’d be here.”
“Hey, I didn’t say which brother, and Darcy sure as shit isn’t going to drink it.”
“Sure as shit,” he echoes. I don’t know why, but swear words always sound funnier in a British accent. Though, Tobias’s isn’t as prominent as the other two. As Darcy tells it, Tobias went to boarding school in England but came to the States for college. “You’re so uncouth. So un … Ritcherson.”
“Thanks. I’ll take that as a compliment. Now, let’s get to work and see how long it takes you to accept me as one of your own.”
Tobias’s eyes are steel, but his lips turn upward. “That’ll never happen.”
* * *
After eight hours of trying to get Tobias to like me, he’s beginning to crack. I can feel it.
Sure, he still glares at me when I talk to him, but I see the amusement in his eyes when I make a joke. Or say something really stupid. Hey, I’m just here for the entertainment.
I get it—why Tobias and Junior are wary of me. For a long time, I didn’t want to accept them either. I did everything I could to separate myself from the Ritchersons. But there’s something about Darcy that makes me want to get to know my other brothers too.
I know they’re both as work focused as Darcy, but do they do it voluntarily or out of obligation? Do they wear that obligation like a badge of honor or because it’s what they’ve always known?
Are they greedy or giving? Excluding toward me. But to people they are close to.
Are they close to anyone? Do they even have friends? Someone they could call a real friend. Not someone who just wants a piece of the Ritcherson pie.
Maybe I’ll never know if we don’t break down the walls put between us. The day Warren Ritcherson walked away from my mother was the day the first brick was laid. Thirty years later, maybe the wall is too high to knock down.
I can’t expect to walk into their lives and immediately be welcomed in like some long-lost brother they always wanted.
Except … Darcy did do that. I admire him for it, but I think I’m more like Junior and Tobias on this one.
So what if they all promised our father they’d play nice?
He’s dead now. They don’t have to live up to whatever empty promises they made.
Yet, Darcy is. Because that’s the type of man he is.
At least if our places had been swapped, I know I wouldn’t have been a total lost cause. If Darcy can grow up to be loyal and mature, then I stood a chance at becoming a decent person too.
The only thing I wonder is, if given the chance, would I have taken it? Or would I be like my younger brothers? I take after them in the looks department. What else do the brats and I have in common?
How else does Darcy differentiate from us?
I’m on my way out to the car when my phone rings, and it’s a UK number that pops up. I answer, way too confident about who it is when I don’t actually know.
“How could you do that to me?” I screech.
Darcy’s warm chuckle fills my ear. “I’m … sorry.”
“Hmm, you don’t sound very sorry. So, what’s the story? Big news over there? Ooh, did one of the anchors on one of our channels tell the world to fuck off or something?”
“Nothing that catastrophic. A merger deal with a small-time online media outlet fell through, and I’ve been over here trying to get them back to the table to renegotiate.”
“So you left me with Toby.”
“Would you rather I send Junior home instead?”
“Hell no.”
“Didn’t think so. I won’t be gone long. Just long enough to straighten out … everything.”
“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were running away from me.” I’m joking. Mostly.
I don’t want to admit that walking into his office and finding him gone didn’t bring up some familial abandonment issues I’ve been harboring. We had a really good night, and then he disappeared.
Self-conscious paranoia creeps over me that he could read my mind at two weak, brief moments where I might have forgotten he’s my brother.
“Why would you say that?” His voice is so high-pitched it may as well be waving a red flag in front of my face. “I have no reason to run away from you. None at all.”
“Hey, okay, calm down. I was joking.” But just like when I hit a nerve with Tobias not thinking for himself, I worry I might be right.
And if he’s running away from me, I can only assume it’s because of something I’ve said or done. Or thought.
“Hey, question,” I say.
“Shoot.”
“Do you have any ESP or any clairvoyant talents you haven’t told me about?”
“What? Where did that come from?”
“Getting to know my big brother.” My thoughts of the official birth line cross my mind again, and it’s possible it’s still paranoia that’s driving it, but I’m reminded about the secret. The thing he wanted to tell me while we were drunk. The truth.
What the fuck is the truth?
“Hey, Darce? I have to go. I need to make another phone call.”
“Talk soon.” He ends the call before I can, like he was happy to be rid of me.
I go into my contacts and hit Dial on my mother’s number, and for the first time in my life, I’m ready to hear everything.
I’m ready to accept who I am. Where I came from.
I hope my mother has the answers I’m looking for.
I’m ready to find out what other skeletons this family has in their closets.