“Shit. That’s your Mom,” Drew said, his eyes widening as he made a dash for the stairs.
Tony arrived in the kitchen at the same time as us, briefcase in hand. He’d obviously been halfway out the door when he heard the scream.
“Darling? What’s wrong?”
My Mom stood by the marble island counter in the kitchen, her face white with terror. She was pointing at a piece of paper next to her bowl of cereal, and my forehead wrinkled with concern. Crap. Another letter from my psychopathic Dad. He must have finally figured out that we were in Medina.
“I…I went to have some breakfast and found this on the counter,” she said, showing the letter to Tony. “And there’s broken glass in my cereal. I have no idea how it got there. God, he must have somehow got in here…”
Her voice trailed off, and I went over to her and put my arm around her. Tony’s face clouded over as he read it, and he abruptly put it down before grabbing the entire bowl and throwing it in the trash.
“I’ll speak with every staff member who’s been in and out of here within the last two days,” he said. “Especially those damned security guards. I caught one of them playing games on his cell phone the other day when he was meant to be watching the camera feeds. We’ll get to the bottom of this.”
“What does the letter say?” I asked.
He handed it to me, and Drew and I read it together. This one was longer than the last few had been, and my skin prickled with goose bumps as I realized just how close my father had been. Close enough to tamper with our food.
Marie, my dear wife.
You have something I need. I put up with you for long enough, and I think I am entitled to it. You know what it is I want. I’ve been keeping an eye on things, and I see that land of yours is worth a pretty penny now. Sell it. Send me the money. I’ve included instructions on how to deposit the money into my Sparbuch. Don’t call the police. You’ve seen how close I can get, and you don’t want to make me angry by involving the authorities like you did last time. Give me what I want and this ends. You have one week. By the way…enjoy your breakfast. Frosted flakes were always your favorite.
“He wants my land,” Mom said. Her face was still white.
“Well, the bastard’s not getting it,” Tony said, his face like thunder.
“What’s a Sparbuch?” I asked. For some reason, I didn’t even feel scared. I just felt numb.
“I’ve heard of it before,” Drew said. “It’s an anonymous Austrian bank account. It’s basically untraceable to any one person.”
“That’s right,” Tony said.
“I don’t get it. How does it work?” I said.
“When you open the account, you don’t have to give a name or anything. So it’s impossible to establish who opened the account or who owns it, since no record is ever created except the Sparbuch itself along with its number in their computer system. No identification has to be shown at any time.”
“Oh.”
“Yes,”” Tony continued, taking over from Drew. “You can mail them and request money to be taken out, which is probably how he’s getting his hands on it, and deposits can either be made by hand, or checks can be mailed to the bank with a note to credit the Sparbuch. You just give them the account number along with the mailed check. That’s what your father is asking us to do.”
“And even if you called the bank, they wouldn’t be able to tell you who owns the account?”
“Nope, they wouldn’t,” Drew said. “Wait…if the person is foreign to Austria, like from here for instance, they might be asked to produce a passport to open an account with them, right Dad?
“Yes,” Tony said. “But that can be circumvented easily. He could’ve paid an Austrian citizen to open the account for him. And we have no way of tracing that either.”
“Shit.”
I glanced at the note again, rereading the instructions on how to transfer the sum he had asked for into the untraceable overseas bank account, and I couldn’t believe that in this day and age, people could still get away with stuff like this.
“Look, don’t even worry about all that. We’re not selling your land and giving him the proceeds. We’re getting the police back over here right now,” Tony said firmly. “There must be some way they can figure this out.”
“No,” Mom said quietly, suddenly looking tired. “You saw what it said about how close he can get, even with all the security. And we know he isn’t making that up.”
She gestured towards the trash can that contained the glass that had been in her food before continuing. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life running from him. I don’t want that for Sophie either. He obviously wants the money from that land, and he won’t stop until he has it.”
“Then let me pay him whatever it’s worth,” Tony said, his eyes flashing with concern. “You shouldn’t have to give up your property just to appease that bastard. You do good things with it. The summer camp is invaluable to some of those children.”
“No. It’s wonderful of you to offer, but it’s not your problem,” Mom said.
“Yes it is. Your problems are my problems. You knew that when we got married. The land is worth about a million and a half…I don’t mean to sound arrogant, but that’s nothing to me.”
She shook her head. “I can’t make you pay him that much money, no matter how much you have. It’s not fair, and it’s not what you signed up for. I’ll sell the land, and he can have the money. Then hopefully he’ll crawl back into whatever hole he’s been hiding in all these years and stay there.”
Tony shook his head slowly, but if he knew her even half as well as I did, then he would know that she wouldn’t back down. She was too proud. She’d never accept that much money from him in a million years.
“I suppose you don’t really need the money,” he finally said. “After all, you’re married to me.”
“Don’t be silly,” she said, giving him a half-smile as he squeezed her hand. “Would you be able to help take care of the sale?”
“Of course, darling,” he said, although I could tell from the stress lines on his forehead that he still wasn’t too keen on letting my Dad win. “Don’t worry about a thing. From what you’ve told me, there are plenty of development companies interested in buying it from you. I’ll have my lawyers draw up the papers as soon as possible. You can go over them and sign them, we’ll mail the check to the Sparbuch as soon as the money comes through, and then it’ll all be over. Piece of cake.”
We all knew it wasn’t going to be that easy, but Tony was obviously trying to make things as easy as possible for her.
She gave him a watery smile. “I could go for a real piece of cake at the moment.”
“Stress eating is never a good idea, but I think we can let it slide on an occasion like this,” Tony replied, trying to make light of the awful situation before summoning the housekeeper to fetch something sweet for my Mom.
She returned a moment later with a piece of carrot cake, my Mom’s favorite, and Tony put one arm around her and used the other arm to hold the delicate china plate in front of her. It was touching to see how in love they were and how much they cared about each other, and I couldn’t wait until my Dad was out of the picture again, once and for all. Then my life could finally go back to being completely normal...aside from the fact that I was screwing my stepbrother.
Chapter 16
Drew
I watched Sophie get out of the car outside the downtown Club Nineveh, her swaying ass hypnotizing me as she began to walk to the VIP entrance.
“Come on,” she said, turning and arching an eyebrow. “It’s your night.”
Just seeing her in that tight skirt made me want to bend her over the hood of my car and bury myself balls deep in her, but I needed to get sex off my brain. Tonight was an important night for my modeling career, if what my agent said wasn’t total bullshit, anyway. Apparently a bunch of scouts from bigger agencies across the country were going to be there scoping the place out for tale
nt, and considering I’d blown off the campaign in Australia to stay here in Seattle, I could use the work. Promo gigs and commercial shoots paid me fuck all compared to editorial work, and as nice as my current agent was, she hadn’t found much for me to do lately. The vodka billboard had been the only major work I’d pulled in months now, aside from the Australian thing.
It was good to have something else to focus on - something that wasn’t Sophie’s crazy Dad. The land sale had gone through without a hitch within a week, and Marie and my Dad had mailed the proceeds off to the crazy motherfucker. He hadn’t been heard from in the two weeks since, and I was beyond glad that it was all over. Seeing Sophie happy was the sweetest feeling in the world, and now that she felt safe enough to go out again, she was attending this gig at the club with me. It must have been the first time she’d been out in weeks.
We still hadn’t told our parents what we’d been up to. We both knew we should, but for some reason, sneaking around just made it all that much hotter. Besides, we’d both figured that maybe it was best we wait to tell them until Sophie had started college – that way we wouldn’t even be living in the same house, and it would look a lot less seedy for us to be hooking up. Although to be fair, we were technically stepsiblings, and a lot of people would probably view that as seedy no matter where we were living.
Oh well. Can’t please everyone.
Honestly, though, I didn’t get the big taboo hype about stepsiblings hooking up. It wasn’t like we were related in any way, and our parents hadn’t even married till we were in our late teens, so who the fuck cared? Fingers crossed our parents would see it that way too…
The pounding bass in the club matched my pulse as I scanned the room, Sophie by my side. She leaned in and told me she was going to get a drink, and she lightly touched her lips to my cheek before stepping through the crowd towards the main bar. I wasn’t drinking tonight. Club Nineveh was filled with seedy fucks, all of them likely frothing at the mouth to get their hands on a gorgeous girl like her, and I needed to stay sober so I could do my best to keep her safe.
I watched her standing up at the bar, and just as I suspected, a muscular sleazeball was making a beeline for her. Fuck, already? Pushing my way through the crowd, I gave him the biggest fuck-off death stare I could muster up, and he drew back, focusing his gaze on a tall blonde instead.
“It’s okay,” Sophie giggled. “You don’t need to follow me to the bar. I can handle guys like that.”
“Maybe, but I can handle ‘em better,” I said with a grin.
She followed my line of sight a second later. Two guys in suits were sitting only a few yards away, and I recognized them as talent scouts from the biggest agency in New York.
“Are they the guys you need to impress?” Sophie asked.
“Yeah.”
“How? Are you going to put on a show, maybe sing and dance?” she said, her dark eyes sparkling with mischief.
“Very funny. Nah, they just need to see me, that’s all.”
“Well, it’s impossible for anyone to not notice you,” she said, poking me in the side.
I hated to sound conceited, but she was right. They’d already spotted me, and one was whispering fervently into the other’s ear as they stared at me. A familiar voice boomed out beside me a second later, and I turned to see Caleb standing there.
“Hey, I didn’t know you guys were coming out tonight!” he said, clapping a hand on my back. “How are you, man? You haven’t responded to my last few texts.”
“Sorry. Been busy. Family stuff, you know,” I replied, keeping my answer as vague as possible.
Caleb had been a decent friend once upon a time, but I’d felt us drifting apart in recent months to the point where I wasn’t sure we even had anything in common anymore. He was still interested in going out every night, getting hammered and trying to pull as many skanky girls as possible, all the while living off a multi-million dollar trust fund, whereas I’d lost interest in that the second I laid eyes on Sophie, as much of a pussy as that made me sound like. I had a trust fund too, but at least I worked. I didn’t want to live off my Dad’s money forever like some useless coddled brat.
“Right. So anyway, how’ve you been, babe?” Caleb replied, focusing his gaze on Sophie and giving her what I assumed he thought was his most winning smile.
“Um. I’m fine thanks,” she replied.
The act he put on around women was fucking ridiculous. He always puffed his chest up and tried to make his voice sound a little deeper and more intimidating, and he ended up sounding exactly like what I imagined a bicep would sound like if it tried to sing.
“Don’t call her that,” I hissed in his ear. “She’s not your ‘babe’.”
“Hey Sophie, would you mind giving me and your stepbrother a minute?” he said, ignoring me and continuing to stare at her. I noticed he accentuated the word ‘stepbrother’.
She nodded and sat down a few feet away, and I kept my eyes on her, making sure no more douchebag gym junkies approached her.
“So,” Caleb said. “I’m guessing this protective brotherly act you’ve got going on isn’t so brotherly, huh?”
“That’s none of your business,” I said curtly.
He took a swig of whiskey, and judging by his breath and the way he was slightly slurring his words, it wasn’t the first drink he’d had.
“Actually, it is. We had a little deal going on, remember? I thought you’ve been avoiding me ‘cause you couldn’t get her, but judging by the way she’s looking at you, I think you did nail her. So what’s the problem? You don’t want my Phantom? I’ve got the keys right here, man.”
He pulled a set of keys out of his pocket and dangled them in my face, and I was suddenly struck by the urge to punch him.
“There’s no deal. The dare, the bet, whatever you wanna call it…it was fucking dumb. Keep your car,” I said.
“Well, if there’s no deal, and you won’t admit there’s anything going on between you two, then I guess you won’t mind if I take a shot at her.”
“Fuck off,” I said, clenching my fists. “Don’t go near her.”
Sophie must have noticed the tension in the air between us, because she returned to my side, her forehead knitted in a quizzical expression.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“You might find your stepbrother isn’t the guy you think he is. Drew and I had a little deal, and he’s trying to back out of it,” Caleb said, his eyes narrowed. Fuck, why was he doing this? Being drunk was no excuse to be such an asshole.
Sophie’s eyebrows shot up even further. “A deal?”
“He’s talking shit. Want another drink?” I said, hastily trying to change the subject.
Unfortunately, Caleb wasn’t giving up that easily. He slid an arm around Sophie’s shoulder and whispered in her ear for a moment, and her eyes went wide as she jerked back and stared up at me with her eyebrows furrowed. Fuck. She knew.
“Look, it was just a stupid dare,” I quickly said. “It didn’t mean anything. It was a fucking stupid idea we came up with after you told me how your friends had dared you to hook up with me that night at the hotel, but I forgot all about it ages ago. Sophie, you gotta believe me. What we have now is real. It’s got nothing to do with that dare.”
“What dare?” she asked. “What are you talking about?”
Caleb drunkenly cackled with laughter. “All I said to her just then was that you wanted to fuck her in the ass tonight.”
Shit. That fucking prick. He’d tricked me into thinking he was telling Sophie about the whole thing, and now I’d opened my big mouth and really stepped in it. She folded her arms and continued to stare up at me.
“Well?” she demanded, her eyes narrowed. “What’s this about a dare?”
Well, fuck. Just when things were finally going well…
Chapter 17
Sophie
As I stood there waiting for an answer from Drew, my heart hammered like crazy. I looked at him, watching him t
ry and fail to slip on that mask that gave nothing away. I had a strange, heavy feeling in my chest; one that I hadn’t felt in years. A warning that I was about to be let down. About to be hurt.
Suddenly I was mentally transported back to being seven years old again, and my school teacher was telling me that my Mom had fallen down the stairs and was in hospital. I’d had that exact same feeling then - a deep sense of foreboding about going home. I’d known the real reason Mom was in hospital, and I’d also known that I’d have to be alone in the house with my Dad while she was gone. Without her there to try and shield me, I was going to be a target for his drunken rages. Yep, it was a really shitty feeling knowing that you were probably about to be hurt but not being able to do a damn thing about it.
As Drew rubbed his head and opened his mouth to say something, Caleb grinned.
“Good luck, man. Car’s outside if you still wanna collect your reward,” he said, slapping him on the back before looking at me and winking. “I gotta get myself another drink. Don’t worry, babe. I’ll be back for you in a sec.”
He was slurring his words, obviously very drunk, and Drew’s jaw twitched. His right hand curled into a fist, and before I could try to stop him, he’d delivered a massive blow to the left side of Caleb’s face. I screamed for him to stop, and Caleb staggered backwards, blood pouring from his split lip. He spat on the ground before wiping his mouth off and looking back up.
“Fuck you, man. It was all a joke.”
“It’s not a joke where Sophie’s concerned, fuckwad. Now get the fuck outta here,” Drew said, lips curled into a snarl.
Holy shit. Whatever this ‘dare’ business was, it was obviously pretty serious if it was enough to make Drew punch his friend in the face. The two talent scouts were staring at us now with their eyes wide, and a small part of my mind figured that Drew had just totally blown his shot with them by openly fighting in front of them like a complete idiot. Two surly-looking bouncers were heading towards us, and Drew grabbed my arm and pulled me out of the club through the side entrance.
Score - A Stepbrother Romance Page 31
