by Lindsey Hart
It’s not exactly a secret that our parents used to be married, and everyone from chicks who want to date him to actual coworkers, journalists, and execs from other companies, has hunted me down over the years, thinking I had some kind of clout with him.
It’s hard to find real friends when your ex-stepbrother is a billionaire Greek God tech genius brought back to life to walk amongst mere mortals.
I didn’t actually hate Raiden when our parents divorced. We were just stuck in the middle of some pretty ugly stuff until it ended, and our parents went their separate ways, never to meet again. Thank god. Over the years, it’s become ingrained in me to be a little bitter towards Raiden. Trust me. I have my reasons.
Now he owns the company I work for, but not for long. Not because he’s going to give up on control or building his empire, but because I’m going to walk out the door as soon as I can get my desk packed up. I love my job, and I thought it might be bearable if only he could stay away. This morning, when he showed up here and demanded a meeting with all the higher-ranking supervisors, managers, etc., etc., and gave a pep talk about how he intends to be hands-on (probably quite literally with half the females in this place), I decided I’m not going to stick around.
I’m not going to let him ruin my life again.
I’m not going to watch him conquer my workplace and change everything I liked about it.
It’s going to come out that we have a connection, albeit a far distant one, and then people are going to do what they’ve always done. Use me to get ahead. Or to get in bed. Both are pretty gross options.
Even if Raiden is insanely good looking and looks and smells expensive, he’ll always just be a rat in rat’s clothing. Yeah, so what if I’m not very inventive with my comparisons. He’s the one looking discomfited, not me. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he squirmed when he sat down, and his voice cracked. Yup, he’s so high up there, he had no idea I even worked here, or that I have since I was twenty-two. Eight. Years. For eight years, I worked my butt off, just so he could come and take it all away and wreck everything.
Raiden looks surprised when I ask him if he’s always an asshole. I used to have this major hang-up about swearing. I still kind of do. I think it sounds really unprofessional, so I have my own inventive repertoire, but no, I’m not above using the real words when I think it counts.
Raiden was always athletic. I used to be really jealous of how he could just pick things up. There wasn’t a single sport he couldn’t play well, and he went to college on a track and field scholarship. Who the heck even gets one of those? Anyway, he wasn’t rich back then. Not until he finished and invented some random software crap that made him a frizzle-fracking ton of money. He then bought out another tech company since he had the money to do it. That only made what he was already doing garner more success.
He branched out into apps a year later, then games, and now us. Or at least the company I work for. We do home security. Why he wants that, I have no idea. I think he just finds joy in dropping a smelly load all over everyone else’s day. That’s right. Raiden is definitely one of those people who would purposely leave the house ten minutes early, even if he felt something brewing, and drop it in a public bathroom somewhere just so other people would have the pleasure of basking in the smell of his poop. He probably thinks it would be a real treat for them.
“Am I always an asshole?” Raiden mulls it over. His voice has changed. It’s deeper. Smoother.
He looks different from his pictures. In pictures, he doesn’t seem so threatening, his eyes aren’t the right shade of blue, and his hair is not so raven black. He’s tall and broad in the videos and photos, but not like he is in person. In real life, it looks like he enjoys eating kittens as a snack and toddlers for dinner. He’s nothing short of menacing in the kind of way that women eat right up and fall into bed with twenty minutes later.
I can almost hear them now. I just happened to slip and fall, and Raiden’s dick just landed right inside me while he was trying to save me.
Everything about Raiden is frustratingly perfect and annoyingly strong and square. I’d like to punch him in his perfect nose, his perfect mouth, or his square, perfect jaw just so he wouldn’t be so perfect. His clothes, his shoes, and even his haircut look expensive. It gives me the urge to take a pair of scissors to some of that shit.
I’m not usually this evil. Raiden just brings out the worst in me.
I meet his cerulean gaze, stare for stare, unblinking. “That’s right. Are you?”
His lips twitch at the corners, and he drops his eyes to my mouth like he’s thinking about doing something very work-inappropriate with it. A strange heat starts in my belly, and a disgustingly disturbing pooling of wetness goes on a little lower. Apparently, my hormones are a little off. I’m two or three days away from ovulating, so it’s just my body acting freaking crazy. Biological clocks are no joke, and hormones aren’t either. But still, I’m grossed out at myself.
“Let’s just say I’m an overachiever. Most people probably think so, and I’d hate to disappoint them.”
“Disappoint them?” I scoff. “There’s probably nothing you couldn’t buy your way out of or into, and that includes a new image. If you screw up and do something nice for someone, I’m sure you could cover it up so your reputation wouldn’t suffer.”
Raiden’s eyes get a strange new glow then. How could I have forgotten he was on the debate team? When I knew him, at least. Sparring with people was something he always loved doing, and I hate how I just accidentally tapped into something that gives him joy. I backtrack fast by leaping out of my chair and grabbing my notebook and pen.
“Since this is just going to be really awkward, and I have no desire to work for you, under you, with you, beside you, or in any capacity that has anything to do with you, I quit. Have a nice life. I hope it’s a lot longer than eighteen years before we have the misfortune of crossing paths again. To be clear, I hope it’s never.”
Raiden’s square jaw ticks. “Is that any way to greet your long lost stepbrother?”
“Ex-stepbrother. And you were never lost. I always knew exactly where you were.”
“So you kept tabs on me.”
My annoyance rises at being caught. Not that I meant it that way. “It’s hard not to,” I bite out. “You’re always in the news or whatever, and you’re on billboards. You can’t live in Florida and not know the name Raiden Vanstone.”
“Well, I’m honored.”
“Why should you be honored?” Now I’m really irritated, which I realize is probably Raiden’s objective. He wants to get me off my game. “Because the whole world bows at your feet? Because your ego is so big that you choose to plaster your face all over the city? Because you’ve absorbed so many companies that stood no chance just to make sure the entire world knows your name?”
“I thought it was just Miami. I wasn’t aware I was a household name around the world.”
I am not playing this game. I was supposed to be prepared for this. I was supposed to be the one to take Raiden by surprise. This isn’t going how I thought it would, but I should have known better. The guy was on the freaking debate team. He probably talked his way into owning all the companies he took over.
“And I just want to say I paid good money for the companies I’ve purchased. No one got screwed over. I really value the hard work and time people have put in, and I paid more than anyone else was willing to when someone wanted to sell. That’s good business to me.”
“That’s your version of events.”
It would be smart to come up with something a little wittier than that. No matter how pissed I am and generally unhappy to see Raiden in all his wondrous male glory, there’s a tightening in my stomach, and my lady bits have to at least acknowledge that Raiden is attractive. As gross as it is, kind of. Wait, no. I’ve decided. It’s totally and utterly gross. Despite my conclusion, there’s still some mysterious, annoying throbbing going on at the juncture of my thighs. And maybe, just maybe,
it’s in my nipple region too. Can nipples throb? Because it seems I’m now learning they can.
Raiden shrugs. “Anyway, I think you’ll find that we can get along just fine. I’m a reasonable person. People actually like me, and I’m a good boss.”
“That won’t be necessary.” I can’t contain my gleeful smile when I continue, “Because I quit.”
CHAPTER 3
Raiden
I thought the ability to surprise me went way by the wayside a long time ago. That’s an expression my grandma loves and has instilled in me over time. My grandma also once told me she was beamed up into a spaceship by aliens who tried to probe her but couldn’t because they were allergic to grandmotherly human farts, and they liquefied on contact. She said she was then forcefully beamed back down to earth. So yeah, I probably shouldn’t be using any of her expressions.
Anyway, I was wrong about being taken by surprise. Zoe just caught me completely off guard, and not many people can do that.
“What do you mean you’re quitting?” I stammer. “You can’t quit. I…I…”
“Don’t worry. You won’t have to pay severance if I’m the one quitting, and I’m not going to do some weird thing where I sue you for wrongful dismissal or harassment or anything like that. I’m way too honest, and that never happened. It’s my choice. And yes, I fully intend to take everything I’ve learned here to some dickhead competition company and become a thorn in your side. Not that a household name like you has to worry about that. People like me are just insignificant.” Zoe blinks innocently at me.
God, she really does have the nicest eyelashes. Even though she has sandy blonde hair, her lashes are thick and dark, framing her eyes beautifully. But her eyes flash with anger and malicious enjoyment though I have no idea what I did to piss her off, so I blurt something equally disarming.
“Do you still have it?”
“Have what?” She sucks in a breath that lets me know she knows exactly what I’m talking about.
“The tattoo.”
“No.” She shrugs. Too quickly. Too glibly. She has always been a terrible liar. “I got it covered up.”
“It was just a stupid idea.”
I know she doesn’t want to talk about it, so of course, that’s precisely what I do. I always loved a good argument. No, not really an argument. More like a battle of wills and intelligence. Zoe was smart too. Way smarter than I ever was. She never got ahead because she was too honest and nice. Things I got over because I had to. I’m still nice enough, at least when it counts.
“Yeah. Poking pen ink into your skin with a safety pin is never a good idea unless you want blood poisoning.”
“Which neither of us got.”
Her eyes narrow further. Her lids are now so low that I can barely even see her lovely green irises. “Because we were lucky. We didn’t even get an infection of any kind. Home tattoos are indeed stupid. And I’m taking it you still have yours.”
We tattooed each other’s initials onto our hip, where we thought no one was likely to ever see them. We also did the blood brothers thing with each other. The tattoo came later, near the end, when our parents fought so brutally and sometimes violently, that it scared us shitless. We knew we were going to be separated, and we promised we’d never forget each other. We also promised we’d have each other’s backs forever, no matter where we were.
“Never mind,” Zoe snaps. “Even if you still have yours, it doesn’t mean anything. You’ve clearly forgotten where you came from.”
“If you’re truly quitting, you should branch out into mind-reading skills. You’re quite confident in your skill at reading me.”
That, oddly enough, surprises her. She looks uncertain, and then a little bit scared and a tad guilty. See? She was too nice. She’s worried she’s hurt my feelings.
But then she tilts her head and shuts off any sympathy or emotion.
“I think I read you just fine. You’re a snobby, overgrown child who has more testosterone than common sense, and money means more to you than anything.” Her eyes rake over my expensive suit in an unsettling way. Unsettling because when she looks at me like that, I feel exposed. Like everything is bared for the world to see. “Clearly.” That word is said like an exclamation mark. There is no room for error or doubt. She’s summed me up in a few words, and she’s so certain she’s right.
“So I’m the classic case of money makes you forget who you are? That’s what you think?”
Zoe stays ominously silent.
“Well.” I shrug. “Looks like you have it all figured out.”
“Looks like I have.” Is that disappointment on her face? Did she expect a fight? The fact that she might have come prepared for this gets my juices flowing, in every sense.
“Looks like it.”
“Good.”
“If you quit, I’m going to fire everyone else in the upper management positions as well. I’ll make sure they know it was your idea that a change was in order. A sort of cleaning of the house for this company to be successful.”
Zoe’s eyes widen so much that they look cartoony. “You wouldn’t!” She gasps.
No, I wouldn’t. Even my ruthlessness has limits. “I would,” I say, in a way that makes it clear I indeed would because I’m an evil bastard. I close my eyes and run my tongue over my bottom lip like I’m savoring the idea. When I look at Zoe again, I make sure I stare her down just in case she had doubts about how much I’m enjoying myself.
“You…you…you can’t do that. There are…there are laws…”
“Just in case you haven’t realized, I’ll fill you in on corporate takeovers. It just so happens that houses often get cleaned out when one company takes over another. Restructuring is always a good idea as it saves time, money, and puts new, fresh thinkers in place. It’s actually an innovative and smart move.”
Zoe’s lips wobble, but then her jaw clenches. I can tell she’s grinding her teeth because she used to do the same thing when we were kids. Except, unlike when we were kids, watching her do it now feels like a punch in the gut, and my cock, which had kind of at least semi-calmed down, is now so hard again, I can barely sit properly without the blood supply to my lower extremities being cut off.
Meanwhile, the glare Zoe is giving me could melt fucking concrete. It’s deadly, but it’s also hot.
“I…that’s…you can’t do that.” She deflates all at once, clearly not willing to risk other people’s livelihoods to make a point. “They have families, and some of them have worked here for decades.”
“All the more reason to change it up. Just as I said, fresh thinking often inspires innovation.”
“It’s security,” Zoe grinds. She’s obviously trying to keep her rage in check. “We’re already as cutting edge as it gets.”
I shake my head and make a tsk tsk noise with my teeth. “There’s always room for improvement.”
“There you go. I’m wrong, I’m too old fashioned, and I don’t have any good ideas. All the more reason to quit.”
“No, all the more reason to get some training. You don’t need to quit. What you need is a promotion. Maybe even think about switching to a different department. Something to change it up.”
“I like what I’m doing just fine. I have a great department and good staff. I’ve worked hard to be a fair supervisor and to make sure we’re doing the best we can at all times,” Zoe snaps. She realizes her mistake too late, and I know if she could kick her own ass right then and there, she would. I’d love to see her try.
“Well, then. Sounds like quitting isn’t an option.”
“It is. Because I can’t and won’t work for you.”
“Can’t? I’m not a monster. In fact, when the company does employee polling, they always rate high on happiness and are very satisfied with the opportunities for training, their pay, the benefits, their workload, and their work environment.”
“Only because if they didn’t mark satisfied, they’d probably get fired.”
“It’s anonymous. O
f course.”
“Of course.” Zoe rolls her eyes. “And there is absolutely no way to find out who is unsatisfied. Come on. You work in tech. I’m sure there are ways.”
“Ways which I would never use.”
“Still.”
“Still.” I shrug. “Think whatever you will. I’m not here to change your mind. I am here to tell you that you’re not quitting. That’s final.”
“Final? Who are you to say what’s final and what’s not? You’re such a…such an…such an asshole! Wait, no, that’s too good for you. You’re cactus poop.”
“Cactus poop?” I must say, I’m surprised again. We haven’t talked about poop ratings since I was twelve. And there was one which we ranked cactus poop. I have to struggle really hard to hold back a smile. “I’m afraid I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Zoe’s eyes flash, and a pink flush creeps over her cheeks. “Yes, you do. I can tell. I told you that you’ve forgotten where you came from.”
“Unlike you, I still have my tattoo.” I hold up my palm. “And the scar here.” It’s true. A faint white line still runs across the upper part of my left palm, right where I cut it too deep with my dull jackknife. Yeah, I had to press really hard to get any cut at all, and I kind of slipped up at the end. It was about as gross and as painful as it sounds. I can say from experience that palms have a lot of nerve endings, and they take forever to heal.
“I…”
“You’re going to arrive at my house tomorrow night at six-thirty to discuss your role here and any future hopes and dreams you might have within the company and for the company? Sounds perfect. I’ll be waiting.”
Zoe backs up a step. Literally. She’s flustered now, and she’s looking to run. I also remember that about her. Her flight mode always did take precedence over any fight instincts. “I’m not coming to your house!”