Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 67465 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 337(@200wpm)___ 270(@250wpm)___ 225(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 67465 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 337(@200wpm)___ 270(@250wpm)___ 225(@300wpm)
“He’s staying with Nanny because he’s trying to turn her against the rest of us. He’s poisoning us from the inside. Probably slipping actual poison into her gravy so that when she gives it to us, we’ll croak.”
“Kimmy,” I sigh, ignoring the crazy vibes that Kimmy’s throwing off. She can be intense, but usually, it’s a good thing. My BFF is a kick-ass boss babe. “I doubt it. He’s just staying with family because he’s been gone a long time and Nanny is, uh, well, she’s the buffer between that and the rest of the world. Nanny is Nanny. Who would not want to stay with her?”
Kimmy shakes her head from side to side so hard that I literally hear her neck creak. It makes me wince. Bones creaking is not a nice sound. “I know all about the will.” Ugh, the will. I never really liked Kimmy’s dad, but he did me some real solids in my life. Kimmy also adored him, so I never said a word about it, but the will he left was a bastardly thing to do. “He knows about the will.”
Van was basically entirely written out of everything after he left when he was eighteen and married his high school girlfriend. He went to Europe and never came back. And I mean it when I say he never came back. In all the years he was away, he didn’t so much as contact Kimmy or anyone else in the family that I know of. She pretended like she wasn’t stung by it because Kimmy is tougher than a tack and sharper than a nail—wait, I think I got that mixed up—but I know it broke her heart. She has every right to be angry. Maybe even wary. If her dad hadn’t been an asshole of the first order who groomed his daughter to take over the family business and then written it into his will that Van could have the head spot if he ever came back and challenged Kimmy for it, I’m sure she’d have a heck sunnier of an outlook about her brother finally coming back.
Kimmy crosses her arms, her black power pantsuit practically crinkling with the movement because it’s so new, and the energy in the room takes on a dramatically darker shift. “My dad had a change of heart when he included Van in the will. That was good of him.” Her face is puckered and murderous. “I’m the one who worked my ass all the way up from the mailroom to CEO. I’ve earned this spot.” Kimmy always wanted to make her dad proud. That’s why she studied business instead of art the way she wanted to. When we were younger, we used to joke about how she’d live in a van and be a crazy cat lady selling paintings. But then Van left, and she grew up, went to college, and became serious. She did work her tushy off. She didn’t want anything to be handed to her just because her daddy owned the business. She more than deserves her place here.
Kimmy’s jaw hardens. She’s grinding her molars so loudly that it sounds like she’s eating rocks as a new version of her favorite breakfast cereal. I have to reach out and grasp her arm because it’s a horrible sound that puts my ears on edge to the tune of freaking bleeding. “Hey, we’re going to get this figured out. You could always shred the will.”
Her right eye starts to tick like crazy. “There’s more where that came from. Endless copies. I can’t shred them all. I can’t burn them all. And I certainly can’t change any of them.” She turns to me, and, truth be told, she’s gorgeous—straight up so beautiful that people stop and stare at her sometimes and forget what they were going to say or what they were doing, but right now, her face is a pure freaking evil genius. Or maybe just evil. She fists her hands at her hips. “Damn right, we’re going to figure it out.”
Shit. Oh god, oh no. This is the solid she was talking about. “N—no,” I stammer as she looks at me in a pointed way. It’s the kind of gaze that incinerates a person straight down to their soul.
She’s perfected the nasty CEO glare over the years, and she’s only barely tempering it with her begging eyes because we’re best friends. There’s also the whole part where I freaking owe her this because after my family lost everything, she made sure her family looked after me. She’s the reason I was able to go to college. It was her mom who splurged on my prom dress, or I wouldn’t have had one otherwise. It was also her family who gave me this job after we graduated, and it was Kimmy who made sure I didn’t have to spend the rest of my life getting papercuts in the mailroom. To say I owe her as more than just her bestie is an understatement of the freaking universe.