Mike pretended to be hurt.
My anger levels were skyrocketing.
“A walk along the harbor, a ride in my private plane,” Mike suggested.
“How about you go get our sisters?” I barked at him.
He snorted and stood up to join our little sisters, who were staring at the tanks of exotic fish. I looked at them, really looked at them. Their new haircuts were great, but they also made them appear older. I could already see the flashes of the adult women they’d become.
I sat down across from Tess.
“Here to tell me about your perfect date?” she asked, fiddling with her teacup.
“I came to have lunch with you, Annie, and Enola.”
“Look at you, playing the perfect big brother.”
“I’m not playing,” I snapped, sitting up in my seat. “You seem to think that I don’t actually care about my sisters.”
“I know that you care about them,” Tess said, pushing aside her tea to lean forward over the table.
So apparently, we were going to have it out.
“But I think that you’re like all the other billionaires I’ve worked as an assistant for. You just think of them as little pets. In ten years, you’re going to look at them and wonder, ‘Who are these people, and why have they not met the expectations I have set for them but never told them about and never actively tried to help them achieve?’ Annie and Enola are going to internalize your disappointment and your laissez-faire attitude toward them and develop a complex.”
“I’m not—”
But Tess barreled on. “Eventually, you’re going to meet some high-society girl who thinks that because her dad could afford to send her on a voluntourism trip to pretend to help poor kids in Africa that she has some sort of idea about how real people actually live, and you’re going to be too clueless to actually see through the fact that she’s shallow and self-absorbed, and then you’re going to have another set of kids that you’re going to fuck up, and we’ll be having this same conversation in fifteen years.”
I glared at her and leaned forward. Our faces were inches away. “You don’t know the first thing about me. You think that because you shop at thrift stores and live in a dilapidated apartment that you have some sort of secret insight into the real world. Well guess what? I grew up in a compound in the desert.”
“That doesn’t make you special, that just makes you damaged,” Tess shot back.
“No, that means that I actually know the meaning of family, and I’m not going to let anything happen to my sisters. Everything I do is for my family because my siblings are all that I have.”
“Then why aren’t you paying attention to them?” she asked in frustration.
I sat back and regarded her. “You think I’m stupid, don’t you, because I’m rich.”
“And attractive,” she muttered.
I couldn’t help it, but the corner of my mouth quirked.She thinks I’m attractive.But she also thought I didn’t have my sisters’ best interests at heart.
“And attractive,” I purred.
Tess reddened.
“You think that I’m just going through life privileged and oblivious. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Do you know what it takes to walk away from everything you’ve ever known, to start over new?”
Her jaw set, and she looked almost sad.
“To leave behind everything and venture out in the world alone?” I continued.
“Yes!” she practically yelled. “And that’s why I don’t want you to just write off your sisters. They shouldn’t be alone.”
“They’re not alone,” I reminded her.
“I want them to have everything,” she said softly.
