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Chapter 24

作者: Ashabi Writes
last update 最終更新日: 2025-12-06 22:23:08

PARKER

Downstairs in our little apartment, things settle into a familiar rhythm—movies, microwave popcorn, warm fleece blankets piled too high. The kids pick something animated and overly musical, and I let them. I don’t have the energy to debate plot holes in a show about magical woodland creatures solving interpersonal drama through song.

If only humans had it so easy.

Lyra curls into my side, her head tucked beneath my arm. Levi stretches out at my feet, using my calf as a pillow.

I don’t even bother changing out of my jeans. I just sink into the couch and let myself be theirs again, fully. Not Parker the assistant, not Parker the mess tangled up in three men’s lives—just Mom. Their mom.

The knot in my chest loosens again, just a little.

Halfway through the movie, I have to pee. I wait as long as I can, not wanting to break the moment, but eventually I shift Lyra off me with an apologetic kiss to her forehead and shuffle down the hallway to the bathroom.

It’s the third time tonight
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  • My Brother's rich best friends   Chapter 30

    HARRISONThe sun is warm. Her hair is catching the light. And for the first time in what feels like a month, things don’t feel like they’re falling apart.She looks up halfway through the meal and says, “You know this doesn’t fix everything.”“I know.”“I’m still your assistant.”“I’m still your CFO.”She tilts her head. “You think we can keep pretending?”“No.”She sighs, like she knew I’d say that. Then she says, “Sometimes I think professionalism is a scam.”I glance up. “Picked that up too?”She stirs her lemonade with her straw. “I mean, what does it even mean? Never cry at work? Never need anything? Never fuck up?”“Never want anything,” I say.She lifts her eyes.I lean forward, resting my arms on the table. “You want my definition?”“Hit me.”“Professionalism is the ability to pretend you’re not a human being. To look someone in the eye and pretend their judgment doesn’t hurt. To want something and swallow it anyway. To sit in a room where you’re not welcome and act like you e

  • My Brother's rich best friends   Chapter 29

    HARRISONShe’s quieter than usual.Not in the “focused on work” way either. I know that version of Parker. She hunches a little when she’s deep in a spreadsheet, furrows her brow when she’s double-checking something. But this? This is different.She’s stiff. Eyes a little too blank when she looks up from her desk.I stand in my doorway with a coffee in one hand and no real plan. I’ve been in meetings all morning, and all I wanted after was caffeine and ten minutes of quiet. But then I passed her desk, and now quiet feels wrong.I take one more sip, then walk over. She doesn’t see me until I’m close. “Hey.”She blinks, then gives me a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “Morning.”“You’ve said fifteen words today. Want to make it twenty?”That gets me a flicker of something—amusement, maybe—but it fades too fast. “I’m fine,” she says. “Just catching up.”“That’s bullshit, and we both know it. Office,” I say, tilting my head.She hesitates. “Harrison, really, I⁠—”“Parker.”She exh

  • My Brother's rich best friends   Chapter 28

    GAVIN“You want to know what Parker’s real crime is?” I ask. “It’s not her résumé. It’s that she didn’t beg for your approval before being good at her job.”Vivian says nothing.“You don’t get to sabotage her because she didn’t kiss the ring.”“This isn’t about her.”“Of course it is.”“No,” she snaps. “It’s about you. Letting your hormones compromise your leadership. You’ve gotten involved with someone you can’t protect. Not forever.”I step back. There it is. The core of it. The threat.She’s not just scared of Parker. She’s scared of what Parker represents—an emotional vulnerability she spent her whole life trying to train out of me. If I care for someone else, she loses her power over me.“Well,” I say. “We’ll see about that.”Vivian narrows her eyes. “If you let her bring this company down, I will not bail you out.”“You won’t have to. Because she’s not going to.”“She’s reckless. She doesn’t understand who she’s dealing with.”“She’s handling your bullshit better than most of th

  • My Brother's rich best friends   Chapter 27

    GAVINI call my mother the way I fire people. Politely. Firmly. Without offering options. “Thursday morning, ten sharp,” I say. “At my office.”Vivian Thatcher doesn’t ask why. She never has to. She says she’ll be there with the sort of clipped elegance that carries undertones of disapproval and barely concealed curiosity.Perfect.I arrive twenty minutes early on Thursday and spend exactly ten of those staring at the glass wall that looks out over the executive floor, waiting for her.When she arrives, she doesn’t stop at reception. She doesn’t greet the staff. She doesn’t look at the client decks being assembled on the table for this afternoon’s donor pre-meet. She simply walks in, her heels sharp on the hardwood, coat draped over one arm, sunglasses still on despite the fact that we’re fifty feet from any natural light.And I watch her pass Parker’s desk.Parker’s head is down, focused on her screen, dark hair pulled back into a sleek twist. She’s in navy today, a pencil skirt and

  • My Brother's rich best friends   Chapter 26

    JACKGood. Because if he even hinted at the possibility, I’d have to reconsider working here, and I’ve grown accustomed to my career. I don’t want to start over somewhere else. “Then what are we doing?”“I’m trying to keep the gala from turning into a referendum on my decision-making.”“It already is,” Harrison says. “You just haven’t responded yet.”Silence falls again. Heavy. Charged. He’s not wrong, and we all know it. I finish the last of my coffee. Cold now. Bitter in a different way. Then I look at Gavin. Really look at him.And I see the weight on him—the pressure of being his mother’s son in a company she built with gold-plated claws. He’s trying to run forward with her hand still clenched in his shoulder blades.It won’t work. I clear my throat. “She’s testing you.”“No shit,” he says without malice.“She wants to know if she can still pull your strings.”His jaw clenches. “She can’t.”“Then prove it.”He meets my eyes.And I say, quietly but clearly, “It’s time she understoo

  • My Brother's rich best friends   Chapter 25

    JACKThe coffee’s hotter than usual this morning. I don’t ask why. Harrison always makes it strong, but when it’s bordering on nuclear, it usually means he didn’t sleep—or he’s thinking too hard and needed something to burn the thoughts off.For me, the first burn of the morning is the only kind I trust anymore. Wakes me up better than alarms or news alerts. Better than guilt, even.He hands me a mug without a word and sinks into the chair across from my desk, stretching out like he owns the place. One ankle propped on his knee, mug in one hand, the other resting on the armrest like a man waiting for the next fire.I take a sip and almost cough. “You trying to kill me?”“You’re awake now, aren’t you?”“Barely.”“Then it’s working.”It’s early. The kind of early where the hallways outside are still quiet, where the sky over the city’s still gray and gold instead of full sun, and where everything feels a little more honest before the day dresses itself in PR and politics.We don’t usual

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