Ignoring that, Beck said, “Well, now that you know all the business, do you want to tell us what’s really going on with you and Brodrick?”
After a few seconds of silence, she answered, “Nothing.”
“You called us on a Sunday morning, crying hysterically, for nothing?”I asked pointedly.
Kelly slumped against the couch, looking defeated.“He really did just hurt my feelings.”
When Beck glanced my way, I knew that we were both thinking the same thing.Because I was her best friend, and because he was her brother, we both knew that shark week was upon her, and while I’d never dismiss my best friend’s feelings, being a woman myself, PMS was real.
However, instead of saying that, I tried a different tactic.“How about Beck and I make dinner for the families tonight, and we’ll use our new relationship as an excuse to patch things up with you and Brodrick?
True to Kelly fashion, she said, “I guess, but we still have invitations to pick out, so...”
Looking at me, Beck said, “Yeah, we’re definitely eloping, baby.”
Luckily for him, I was okay with that.
Chapter 1
Room Three – Multiple Partners
Riaz~
I had a love/hate relationship with my job, and I could admit that it was mostly hate, though it paid well.I was the CEO of RM Security Innovations, and though I had stopped going into the field years ago, every now and again, I grabbed my tools to see to a project personally.
Like today.
Granted, getting out from behind my desk from time to time helped to keep me from getting complacent, but there really wasn’t a huge threat of that happening anyway.Having grown up in a big family, laziness hadn’t been tolerated in our household, something that I was grateful for now.As a teenager, not so much.
Early on, my parents, Miguel and Suzanna Marco, had decided on six kids, and eight people in a four-bedroom house had been the stuff of nightmares.Now, had they’d been all boys, all girls, or an even number of each, things might not have been that bad.However, when they’d had my sister, Valencia, that had caused a bit of crowding.Since a girl could not share a room with boys, that had left three of us in one room together, and my eldest brother, Miguel Jr., moving into the living room had just caused more issues with space, though Clemente and Javier had been thrilled to finally share a room together.
At any rate, with my father working as a car salesman, and my mother working as a dispatcher for a trucking company, they had worked long hours, leaving the household chores as our responsibility, and Miguel Jr.hadn’t been about to get yelled at for any of us, and so he had ruled us younger kids with an iron fist.So, between Miguel Jr., Clemente, me, Javier, Guillermo, and Valencia, the chores had never gone undone, and the only exception had been Valencia after hitting puberty.Once a month, we’d left her alone, letting her wallow in her biblical agony in peace.
All that to say that it had all paid off in the end.During my sophomore year in high school, and due to late registration, I’d been forced to take a mentoring elective because all the other classes had been full.So, not caring one way or the other, the school counselor had enrolled me into an IT mentorship program for credits, and within a few weeks, I’d found my calling.For whatever reason, my brain had taken to informational technology as easily as a summer’s day, and there’d been no going back for me after that.That one class had led me to where I was now, and after four years of college, a pile of student loans, and the refusal to fail, I was a thirty-four-year old millionaire, and since my company was privately owned, I was in complete control of where my life went from here.
Now, while my company had its fingers in all sorts of endeavors, its primary focus was security.In a world where there were monsters everywhere, it was a very profitable line of business.However, while I loved what I did, I hated the reason for it.I hated that people didn’t feel safe in their own homes or places of business.I hated that people needed proof of a crime before they were taken seriously, which was the reason that I was here now.
