Total pages in book: 85
Estimated words: 78915 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 395(@200wpm)___ 316(@250wpm)___ 263(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78915 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 395(@200wpm)___ 316(@250wpm)___ 263(@300wpm)
Sitting in an empty seat, I’m about to page my two partners when they come walking into the room dressed almost identical. “Glad you two could join me,” I say with a smirk. Francis winks at me, and I groan.
“She’s your sister, asshole,” Trevor says, sitting in the chair in front of me.
“Stepsister,” Francis says, sitting down and grabbing a bottle of water from the middle of the table. “She’s our stepsister, which makes her—” I sit back and cross my arms over my chest, looking at them.
“Off-limits,” Trevor interrupts. “Bottom line, our father was married to her mother.”
If you had told me when I was younger that these two would end up not only my best friends but also my business partners, I would have bet money against it. They came into my life when I was ten, and they were thirteen and fourteen, respectively.
My mother divorced my father when he had an affair with my nanny and my after-school tutor. To this day, I don’t know if it was together or at different times. Don’t feel too badly for my mother, though, because it took her less than a month to wrangle Ernest up, and they married in grand socialite style. She was the talk of the town, which she loved more than anything. She was the one woman to finally get Ernest to settle down after he lost his wife to breast cancer. He was raising his boys with the help of a nanny, a chef, a chauffeur, tutors, and anyone else he needed to hire to keep from spending time with them.
The three of us formed a bond like no other when the brothers were stuck dragging this annoying ten-year-old girl around with them. Our parents wed, and then they disappeared for a good six months. We had each other, and for seven years, it was what we thought our family would be. Our Christmases was spent skiing in Switzerland while our summers were on a yacht somewhere in Europe.
Everyone was living their best life until Ernest woke up one night with chest pains, and two hours later, he was pronounced dead, leaving my mother the grieving widow.
We each mourned differently. Francis went headfirst into sports. He was expected to be drafted first in the MLB until he tore his tendon in his knee the last game of the year.
Trevor buried his head in school and graduated with a master's degree in communication. I graduated with honors and went on to graduate with a master's degree in marketing.
On the other hand, my mother grieved by marrying another man, and this one had three kids. Luckily, we were all old enough not to have to be in each other’s lives. It made it less messy when the divorce came. It’s because of my mother that I don’t think I will ever get married. I just don’t want a man to have that kind of control over me.
“Okay,” I say. “As much fun as it is watching you two go at it, I’d really love to get home before the sun goes down.”
“I told Angelica that I would be home in time for dinner,” Trevor says of his longtime girlfriend.
“I don’t know how you do it.” Francis looks at Trevor. “To be with the same one day in and day out.” His face forms a grimace. When I graduated from the university, these two were the only ones cheering me on. Over beer and chicken wings, the three of us joked about starting a company with the chunk of change we inherited when Ernest died. No matter how many times I fought with them about giving it back, they refused to take it.
Francis got us our first client. It was someone he went to school with. His agent had just dropped him because of another DUI, and we decided that if we could turn his image around, it would look great for us. He then introduced us to other athletes, and slowly, but surely, we built our portfolio.
Francis takes care of baseball and golf. Trevor takes care of football. I take care of hockey, and we all split the basketball players.
We now have a staff of over one hundred, and we continue to grow every year.
“Okay, so what do we have going on this week?” I ask. They each fill me in on their prospects, and we finish the meeting in record time.
I walk back to my office and see that everyone has cleared out for the weekend. Grabbing my purse and laptop bag, I walk out just as the sun dips below the horizon.
I don’t think I’ve left the office early in five years, I think as I’m unlocking my white Range Rover. I climb in and start it. My phone rings right away, and I look down to see Manning’s name.