Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 96404 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 482(@200wpm)___ 386(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96404 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 482(@200wpm)___ 386(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
“You’re speaking to the student who graduated at the top of his class at Harvard Law. You merely took the two-year program and passed the bar. Show some respect, peasant.”
“Maybe you should take your own advice. I barely went to law school and still passed the bar with a score better than yours.”
“Nate helped you cheat.”
“Hearsay.”
Daniel shoves himself off me with distaste, but he still snaps a picture here and another one there.
I have no doubt that he’ll actually try to sell them. Unlike him, I keep my public appearances to a minimum and specialize in corporate law so I don’t have to take on cases that get too much public attention.
If I’d wanted to be in the limelight, I wouldn’t have metaphorically cut ties with my grandparents, and instead, I would have just followed in Grandfather’s footsteps.
Mrs. Weaver about had a stroke when I announced I was joining Nate in law and she threatened to take away my trust fund, apartment, car, and everything I’ve ever owned.
So I left them with her and slept on Nate’s couch for months while I took an intensive law course, apprenticed at his firm, and then studied for the bar.
My grandparents still actively try to ruin me and Nate for turning our backs on them, but I couldn’t give a fuck about them and their legacy.
If there’s anything I learned after being at the brink of death, it’s that I don’t have time to play other people’s games.
I have my own.
Before, I always saw my grandparents as my saviors and I accepted that I had to pay my dues by being the perfect Weaver. But I was wrong.
They only ever cared about themselves. They’re the reason Dad ended up in Japan, broke and with nothing to fall back on. They’re the reason we were poor and Mom had to steal from dangerous people, which is what got her and my father killed.
My grandparents might not have had a hand in it, but they indirectly participated in their deaths.
I was only fooling myself by thinking I wouldn’t meet the same fate.
So I had two options. Either I became their puppet or I got out of their shadows.
I chose the latter.
We still see each other at her banquets, because they like to brag about my and Nate’s accomplishments, even when they’re privately against them.
The door opens and Daniel stops his photo session when Knox walks in, dressed in a white tuxedo. Seriously, he looks like some Italian businessman from the sixties, but surprisingly, he pulls the look off with his build.
He pauses in the entrance and stares at the ceiling as he forms an L with his thumb and forefinger. “Take a picture, Dan. Make sure the line of my jaw is visible.”
Daniel complies, circling him like he did me. “Give me your best poses, my muse. Yes, more brooding…more handsome but still less than me. That’s it, give me the mystery, the thrill…”
They spend a few minutes taking pictures and feeding each other’s egos.
Daniel and Knox are both English and came to the States after they graduated high school. They studied law at Harvard, fucked half the female population, and are currently plotting to conquer the other half.
They’re also Asher’s acquaintances through Aiden King, a mutual friend from England from when my childhood friend studied in Oxford.
Daniel specializes in international law because it gets him on the cover of countless magazines around the globe. Knox has made criminal law his bitch because, as he said, he has ‘tendencies to satiate.’
We met after I joined Weaver & Shaw, Nate’s law firm that he founded with his best friend/ex-rival, Kingsley Shaw.
At the start, we competed so hard and made each other’s lives hell. They hated me because I’m Nate’s nephew and then ganged up on me. But over the years, that rivalry has become our favorite pastime. We enjoy digging holes for each other and waiting to see if the other will take the bait.
We give Nate a headache, but it’s worth it.
We all recently made junior partner, but it’s far from being the end of our weird-as-fuck rivalry.
Daniel and Knox finish their photo shoot and force me to take a selfie with them that they’ll probably blast all over their social media pages.
“Are we ready to go or does your ego need more stroking?” I ask in my bored tone.
I almost always sound that way now.
Dull.
Hollow.
Down.
I lost a part of my soul seven years ago and I’ve never managed to get it back. Which is strange as fuck since I thought I didn’t have a soul in the first place.
Finding out I actually do, then losing it cost more than I can afford.
“Someone take this grumpy fucker and toss him somewhere that I can’t see,” Daniel jokes.
“Or hear,” Knox adds.
“Or even think of.”
“Nate would kill us, though.” Knox taps my head. “You know how protective he is of his little prince.”