It wasn’t high-end.
It wasn’t polished.
And that was precisely why my father hated it.
He believed we’d “bettered ourselves,” that we’d clawed our way out of the working class and never needed to look back. But my grandfather never saw it that way. To him, dignity wasn’t something you bought; it was something you lived.
And here, in this small, imperfect bistro with its warm bread and scratched wooden tables… I felt more like myself than I ever did in my father’s world.
I’d been lucky, in the end.
Lucky that I discovered early on I had a knack for computers—systems, patterns, the kind of logic that always made more sense than people. And luckier still that I crossed paths with Ethan and Victor at school. A match made in heaven, though none of us would’ve admitted it back then.
Three kids who didn’t fit the mold we were shoved into.
All of us were “new money,” which meant the old families ignored us unless they needed someone to look down on. Funny how the ones who looked down on us now want meetings.
Three minds wired for precision in a place obsessed with pedigree.
Three boys who built something in the computer lab that no one expected—and no one could control.
For the first time, I wasn’t alone.
And for the first time, my life started to feel like mine.
“This is good.” Mira tipped the glass to her lips again, and I watched her beautiful neck work as she swallowed.
I nudged the tray of meats and cheeses toward her. The last thing I needed was her drinking on an empty stomach. She’d been working nearly as long as I had, and neither of us had any sense of self-preservation left.
“So,” I said, leaning back slightly, “I have a rule about dinner.”
She pursed her lips. The memory of her on her knees—her mouth wrapped around my cock, her eyes glazed with obedience—hit me so hard I almost forgot what I was saying.
“Yes,” she asked softly.
I cleared my throat, forcing the image out of my mind. “We’ve been working long hours, so how about this once, we don’t discuss work. Nothing about the shit storm that’s coming.”
She set her glass down, fingers light on the stem. “I understand. But can I say one thing, first?”
I dipped a piece of bread into the oil. “Okay,” I said, popping it into my mouth.
Her voice softened. “You’re going to be fine. We’ll figure this out.”
The words shouldn’t have hit me the way they did.
But they did.
Hannah arrived with our plates, sliding them in front of us with practiced ease.
“Enjoy your meal,” she said before disappearing toward the kitchen.
Hannah was a sweet kid—barely nineteen—and one of my distant cousins.
My father hated that side of the family, pretended they didn’t exist.
Where he had clawed his way out of the working class and polished every trace of it off himself, my aunt had stayed. Kept the accent, kept the roots, kept the grit.
A family divided by ambition.
