Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 68937 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 345(@200wpm)___ 276(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68937 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 345(@200wpm)___ 276(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
“Okie dokie, smokie,” I said. “What did you call for then? I’m not ready to go to the board meeting yet, or I would’ve called.”
The ‘board meeting’ was something that I did once a month.
The board that the meeting was for was my father’s brainchild, Castanon Enterprises.
When my mom married my dad, he’d been a Castanon, and he’d owned a multi-million dollar real estate empire in the middle of Dallas. He’d been the top of the top and had made his business into one of the world’s largest companies that bought and sold both residential and business real estate.
When he’d died, Granddad had taken over the day-to-day crap until I’d graduated college. When I was done, he’d transferred all of his shares—both his and my dad’s—to me for safe keeping.
I’d vehemently refused at first.
Should’ve kept refusing to be completely honest.
But my brothers and my granddad forced my hand.
God, I couldn’t wait until I could put that board and the Castanon empire behind me.
The day that Copper got out, that vile place was all his.
When he’d been younger, our ‘father’ had started grooming Copper to take the whole thing over one day—when he was very old and couldn’t cognitively run it anymore because God forbid he give it up earlier than he had to.
The rest of the family—Chevy, Cutter, and I—hadn’t once been asked to join him when doling out that knowledge. Which had caused us all to not want anything to do with it.
They’d—my well-meaning family—said that I deserved it. That I could either run it into the ground or make it even better.
According to them, I was going to get the money from that stupid place, and I was going to live happily ever after with it.
What they didn’t know was that I hadn’t touched that fucking money. None of it.
It felt dirty to me.
Like a consolation prize for my father’s abuse.
But, in the beginning, the reason I’d agreed was twofold.
One, I would make sure this stupid business was thriving and ready to go for when Copper got out and could take it off my hands.
Second, it was because of my father’s aide, Alexander Pettigrew.
Alexander Pettigrew would’ve taken it all over had I not taken it.
He was on the fast track to taking it right out of my grandfather’s hands because he was ‘too old’ according to the company’s by-laws.
And he’d have flourished in the position.
He was just the kind of shark that that place needed to thrive.
However, if there was one thing that I would not do, it was let that man win.
Alexander Pettigrew was just as bad as my father.
Though he hadn’t hurt me like my father had, he’d watched plenty of times. He’d turned a blind eye. He’d sat down and watched while my father had tortured me endlessly and laughed when I’d done something to protect myself and my dad had retaliated.
He’d even offered suggestions.
I’d been too fucking scared that he’d retaliate and take it out on Copper if I told the world that he was a willing participant in my childhood abuse.
As it was, he’d fought tooth and nail to make Copper pay. Then he’d fought to ensure that we got nothing after my father’s death.
Luckily, our grandfather had fought just as hard and won on our behalf, and everything had become ours that was owed to us.
My brothers got the lakefront property.
I, on the other hand, got the company that I hated, the dividends that I refused to touch, and a headache once a month because I was forced to sit in on a meeting that could’ve been an email.
The only good thing I got out of those meetings was opposing those that I hated on that board, and becoming a sometimes deciding vote to make things go the way that I wanted them.
Alexander Pettigrew had thought he’d be able to fight forever, but lady luck had finally caught up to him and taken him out of the game.
A woman had come out against him, not caring about all the money and clout he had and accused him of rape.
Things had gone to court, and Alexander Pettigrew had gone to prison because the evidence had been overwhelming.
He’d been sentenced to seven years in prison—which was a fucking joke because Copper had gotten three times that for a crime that wasn’t nearly as vile.
Luckily, at first, it hadn’t been the same prison as Copper.
But after a few years of him being in, he’d been transferred, and he’d wound up at the same prison as Copper six months ago.
That’d been why I hadn’t been visiting Copper as much.
We’d all decided that until Copper noticed, we weren’t going to tell him that Pettigrew was in there with him.
Meanwhile, Pettigrew disgusted me so much that I wasn’t willing to chance even seeing him.
He made my skin crawl, and the thought of seeing his beady little eyes again made me want to vomit.