Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 67465 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 337(@200wpm)___ 270(@250wpm)___ 225(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 67465 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 337(@200wpm)___ 270(@250wpm)___ 225(@300wpm)
“You’re going to befriend him and seduce him into telling you everything,” Kimmy says so confidently, like yeah, it’s just that easy for me to saunter up to her long lost super flaming hot older brother and be all like, oh yeah, btw, tell me all your dirty secrets since that’s not super sus or anything.
I can feel my eye start to tick now. “How do you think I’m going to do that? If he’s back after spending all this time away, he’s not going to trust anyone.”
“Do this for me, and I’ll throw in the handbag you love so much. I’ve seen you drooling over it.”
“God! Kimmy! This is your brother we’re talking about here. Be serious.”
She swallows thickly, and her dark and evil broody expression gets a heck of a lot darker. “I am being serious.”
“Seduce him how?” This is unfair. Kimmy knows all about the crush I used to have on Van.
“Not seduce him in that way,” Kimmy says, giving me a funny, hairy eyeball look, which made me realize that I just threw down all my cards on the table for her to read. Smooth, Remi. Seriously, real smooth. “I want you to befriend him, spy on him, and find out what he wants. If it’s not the company, then great. Maybe he doesn’t even know about the will. But if he does want the company, then he needs to be distracted.”
If you don’t actually mean ‘seduce,’ then you probably shouldn’t use that term. “But—but you love your brother.” I switch tactics since I’m not going to debate the semantics of a word that I don’t want to think about when it comes to Van. I don’t want to get into it with Kimmy, and I definitely don’t want to get into it with myself and my lady bits, which are flipping the flip out right now even though it’s been, oh…right, fourteen years since Van left. File that one under #PatheticAFforlife.
Kimmy snorts and rolls her eyes at exactly the same time, which is a crazy look on anyone. She’s seriously talented in so many ways. Next to her, I feel like a blundering hippo, and not the cute ones either. “This is my empire, and my brother isn’t allowed to have it.”
“But technically, that will….”
“Technically, smechnically. You know that if he comes in here, he’ll mess everything up, right? Fire half the good people here just out of spite and probably run the other half into the ground because it’s not him who spent his whole freaking adult life here learning the ins and outs of this place. If I lose my position here, you can kiss your ass goodbye.”
“He wouldn’t do that.” She raises a brow. I can tell she’s ready to argue about this all day, so I try and take a different route. “I don’t know why you think he’d tell me anything. He didn’t want to be my friend in high school, and that’s all I have now to go on. I was just the dorky friend of his kid sister. We were both uncool to him. If we’re going to do this, why can’t we just ask him straight up why he’s back and what his intentions are?”
File that one under #DumbAFsuggestions.
“You think he’s really going to dish all his nefarious plans to us when we’re the enemy?” Kimmy scoffs. “I don’t think so. What he’s planning is going to be a hostile takeover, and you don’t consort with the people you’re planning on overthrowing, at least not willingly. He wasn’t willing to let us into his life in the past decade and a half, so he’s not going to be so forthcoming now.”
“Or you could just be a nice sister and welcome him back and give him some love.”
Kimmy shakes her head, sending a mane of dark black hair flying over her shoulders. “I don’t care how you get me the information, just that you get it.” Even if you have to torture it out of him is clearly implied here. “Even if you have to seduce him for real.”
“What? What kind of hot mess do you think I am?” Right. The kind of hot mess express that isn’t really a hot mess but more like an epically spicy full-on disaster. Ever since my dad made a series of bad decisions, bankrupted his company, and lost the family fortune as well as our house and the lifestyle that went with being comfortably upper class, things haven’t been very right in any of our lives. “Can you do me a favor and please not answer that? No seduction for real. We are not talking about my girly crush on him from a million years ago.”
“I just need to know that he’s going to mind his P’s and Q’s and keep his nosey nose out of what doesn’t belong to him.”