The Millionaire's Bet [BOOK ONE][#Wattys2015][#SYTYCW15][#CarinaPress]

part four

ANDREW

My thoughts consumed me and it was too much for me to cope with and, with all the pain and the hurt, there was only one person I could speak to at a time like this; there was only one person I wanted to be there for me and to listen to everything which was on my mind.

I had last two hours before I phoned Ben and demanded that he meet me somewhere. He was my older brother and he had been there for me throughout everything, from the death of our asshole father to dealing with Rebecca walking out on me, but he could be a right ass when he wanted to be simply because he thought he was better than me most of the time; he actually did something with his life while I was handed everything which I had.

I am more than certain that the Board were going to be pissed with me walking out but, right now, I couldn't give a shit either way. I knew the game they were playing and I wasn't going to let them win, even if they were constantly one step ahead with everything they had planned, I would be the one to win this game now; especially with them sinking as low as employing the sister of Rebecca fucking Lopez.

They must have thought that was going to be the thing which broke me and, as hard it was to have her as my Personal Assistant, I was going to prove them wrong by being the strongest I had ever been; right after I had drunk some more whiskey and smoked more cigarettes than was considered healthy for a daily intake of nicotine.

Ben hated that I turned to alcohol as the answer to my problems and he hated the fact that I smoked even more. He detested people who smoked and the only time I had ever seen Ben drink was while he was in the company of myself, other than that, my brother steered well clear of alcohol and preferred to remain sober rather than off his face at any given opportunity; it was times like that when I refused to acknowledge that he was even my brother.

"So? What brings you here, brother?" I had barely taken a seat on the sofa opposite it when the words came out of his mouth. I always found myself looking around Ben's apartment whenever I came round here because I was always surprised by just how different it was to the apartment in which I lived. Ben could have any place he wanted, coming from a family as wealthy as ours, but he decided that he would prefer to stick to the quieter side of town.

His living room was surrounded my glass windows and gave one of the most impressive views of the East Coast in the evening that I had ever seen. There was the master bedroom which belonged to Ben, he didn't even have an en-suite and had to struggle with his tiny bathroom just beside the front door, and there was the much smaller guest bedroom which Andrea and Scarlett used whenever they came to town for their monthly visits. And the kitchen was barely big enough for one person to be able to cook a proper dinner.

"Y'know, I found out today just how far the Board are willing to go in their bid to remove me as CEO," I took a sip of the drink Ben had presented me with the moment I walked through the door. It was pretty scary just how well he knew me but, then again, he was my older brother and that meant he probably knew me better than I even knew myself.

"What do you mean?"

"They've only gone and fucking employed Rebecca's sister to be my personal assistant," I tried to hide the pain in my words but I knew it was useless. I was never going to really be over Rebecca and I certainly wasn't ever going to get over what she did to me, especially now I know that she walked out with my daughter and never even had the decency to tell me that she had been born.

I hated the way her name sounded coming out of my mouth. It was such a foreign word to me and I had gone for so long now, pretending that she had never existed, but that was damn near impossible because I had Alyssa as a constant reminder of my fucked up past. I couldn't refer to her as the bitch, like I had been doing all day, because Ben had always been to demand that I treat women with the utmost respect; even if that women had stomped all over my heart and treated me like complete shit.