CHAPTER 1

Susan’s POV

“Stop squirming,” My mother’s nails dug into my arm as the town car pulled up to the law office. “And for God’s sake, stop crying.”

“You said we were just meeting your lawyer. You didn’t say anything about—”

“I said what you needed to hear.” She checked her lipstick in a compact mirror. “Now fix your face and follow my lead.”

I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t want any of this, but it’s quite obvious with the look on my mother’s face that arguing would only make things worse.

The building was intimidating even from afar but my mother strode through the lobby as if she owned it, dragging me behind her.

“Conference room 12-B,” she told the receptionist. “The Cuban will’s reading.”

“Ma’am, that’s a private—”

“I know what it is.” My mother kept moving without pausing to acknowledge the receptionist running after her in her ridiculously high heels.

We got in front of a huge mahogany set of doors that my mother slammed open so hard that the doors hit the wall behind them.

“This reading is a fucking FRAUD!”

Twenty heads or thereabout turned to stare at us. I wanted to sink into the floor and disappear.

“Ms. Rivers, you can’t be here.” A man in an expensive suit stood up, looking uncomfortable and trying to politely ease my mother out of the room.

“Can’t I?” My mother threw a folder onto the long table between the occupants of the room “Open it.”

I couldn’t hide the grimace across my face, I looked around the room uncomfortably trying to avoid the gaze of the men in the room, but somehow my eyes met stunning brown eyes that had me looking again to be sure it wasn’t my eyes playing tricks on me.

I had seen countless pictures of the man staring intently at me, and none of them did justice to his handsome frame. I was taken aback by how much he affected me. I pinched myself.

He’s your brother.

I had to remember that.

His brown eyes shifted from me to my mother. I could see the look of contempt in his eyes and absolute disgust. I did not agree with my mother’s way of going about things, but how dare he give us that look? Like we were trash, like we meant nothing? Sudden anger flooded through me and I wanted to gouge out his handsome eyes.

“Who the hell are you?” he asked, his tone reflecting the disgust his eyes were filled with.

My mother was about to speak when I cut in, looking into his eyes and not breaking contact, “I’m Susan Rivers, love child of Richard Cuban. Hello brother.”

I knew the way I had called him brother irked him and that brought a smile to my face. His gaze had shifted from my mother and back to me. He looked at me like I was prey that he could gobble up at any fucking time he wished to. I stared back at him with the same intensity with which he looked at me.

He scoffed, then broke into a chuckle like this was child’s play.

“People like you amuse me,” he said, his voice so cold that it could freeze hell over, “you walk in here claiming you’re my father’s child just so you can get a cut from his estate. Don’t you find it pathetic?”

Without breaking his gaze, I answered him coldly, trying to match the meanness with which he spoke, “You’re the pathetic one. Everything was handed to you so how can you judge those who have to fight for their place in the world?”

“Your place in the world is in the gutter,” he was seething, “and my place is here. You should get out before I have security dump your ass in the middle of the road.”

I had no comeback and that angered me more. I wanted to say something equally damaging to him. Something that would pierce his stone-made heart, but my head was blank. He snickered at me knowing he had won, then shifted his gaze to my mother.

“It is impossible that my father would have had a mistress,” he said, “he loved my mother and only her.”

My mother scoffed, “Surely, you are not that naive.”

“Call security in…”

But just before he could complete his order, the baritone voice of the late Richard Cuban filled the room.

When I die, my entire estate goes to Susan Cuban, daughter of Elena Rivers. I’m sorry I kept you a secret until the day I died.

I’d heard that recording a hundred times in the past week. It had come as a shock when my mother had told me that I was the heiress to a late billionaire. I questioned it, but she had told me very firmly that everything that belonged to Richard Cuban now belonged to us and she was going to prove it with this recording.

I watched Mark’s face go red with anger and disbelief. It was my turn to smirk, but Mark regained his composure a little too quickly for my liking.

“Anyone can fake a recording,” Mark said, but I heard the uncertainty in his voice.

“Then explain the paternity test in that folder. 99.9% match. Susan Rivers is Richard Cuban’s biological daughter,” my mother said triumphantly, dumping the brown envelope on the large mahogany desk in the centre.

The people in the room with my half-brother looked lost and confused. I watched them fidget, trying to make sense of what was happening. Someone reached out to examine the paternity test on the table.

“Even if this is real,” Mark said through gritted teeth, “it doesn’t mean shit. All of my father’s assets have been distributed accordingly in his will and you get nothing.”

“I guess we’ll have to see about that, huh?” I was not particularly interested in becoming a billionaire, but from the moment I had looked into those smoldering brown eyes, I found a strange joy tormenting them.