Chapter 24
Jacob
There are only a handful of people who have the clearance to come up to the penthouse. As soon as I heard the footsteps, I went through the catalog in my memory to recall who all has the clearance and held my breath. When he came around the corner, I felt like the breath that I was holding was stolen out of my lungs. I heard audible gasps through the room from everyone else as well in the shock of the unexpected figure standing before us.
I felt a mixture of emotions, all conflicted together, but the primary feeling was anger. I felt as if my blood was boiling as I fisted my hands. Tyson moved fast and came behind me and held me back just as I was getting ready to lunge.
Brad put both his hands up in defense and took a step back.
“What the fuck do you think you are doing here?” I spit in his direction.
“I want to explain why I did what I did.” my cousin says to the group.
“Why you lied on stand? Why you lied to me, your best friend, your family? Why you chose the wrong side? What will it be?” I spat at him.
“All of it. I came to tell you everything, as much as I can at least. Can we... can we sit?” Brad motions to the couches a mere ten feet from where we are standing.
We all congregate on one side of the couch, while Brad pulls a dining chair in front of the couch and sits down. He begins to tell us why he broke familial ties, why he lied on the stand and so forth. It still seemed that he was hiding something big from us. The timer on the oven went off and he had to stop his side of the story because we all froze in place. He talked for a solid hour, detailing events from the last two years to present. He showed remorse and awkwardness with his actions, but his tone and face remained neutral and unaffected. When he was finished, he stood up and brushed down his shirt, turned on his heel and left without a word. None of us said anything for several moments. The air in the room was so thick that it became hard to breathe. I had to open up one of the windows to get some air circulating or I was going to pass out.
“What the fuck just happened?” Tyson questions out loud.
“Was it all bullshit?” Beth asks.
“I have no fucking clue.” I shake my head.
“Where do you think he’s going to go?” Allison asks quietly to no one in particular.
“Fuck if I care.” I whispered.
“You don’t feel sympathy at all?” Tyson asks.
“Not a single bit. He made his bed, the fucker is going to lay in it. And I won’t give a rat’s ass about him and neither should you. He’s dead as fuck to me.” I sneer.
I should feel a little bit of reprieve at now knowing why our family was dishonored by Brad, but it just angers me more. While I wanted to know the why and the how, I don’t think I was ready for it just yet.
He came and he went, and I have no idea where he was going, or if we would ever see him again. A part of me cared, but the other part, the part scorned couldn’t give a shit.
I pleaded with the group to continue our evening as if we never had the interruption. Beth put a lot of time into the dinner and I didn’t want it to go to waste. While the food was delicious, none of us were acting like ourselves. We wanted to discuss what Brad said, but we also wanted to put the past behind us.
That’s exactly what I planned to do. I guess now I can fully move on from the past several months and somehow put the idea of marriage in Beth’s head.
After Tyson and Allison left, I sent a quick email to my housekeeper who comes to the penthouse when no one is around to come in the morning before we both wake up to do clean up from the evening. The only thing on my mind was the earlier thought of getting my dick in Beth’s mouth and I didn’t want to spend any time cleaning up when I needed to get myself in between her legs.
I rush Beth down the hallway to the bedroom, and without missing a beat I had my pants unbuttoned and my shirt over my head. She sat on the bed wide-eyed and stoic.
“I need to know if it’s okay with you if we just fuck?” I ask.
“You’re asking?”
“I don’t want to assume, and I know right now I can’t do soft and sweet, but I need you.”
“What are you going to do?” she asks meekly.
“I’m going to do what you asked me to do in Vegas, the day before we went to trial. I’m going to fuck you ten ways to Sunday. I want to make you feel me for days, and I want to feel that I took what’s mine and that you liked it.”