I Hate, I Bake, and I Don’t Date! by Alina Jacobs
51
Beck
“Have a productive day at work,” I told my sisters the next morning when I dropped them off at their little office in the Svensson Investment tower.
“Is this what Greg has them doing all day?”
My older brother Hunter walked in flanked by Greg. He and Greg were like the two towers from TheLord of the Rings—all-seeing, all-knowing, all assholes.
“As much grief as Greg has given me,” Hunter said in a clipped tone, “about how our younger brothers are raised, and here he’s just letting the girls run wild. Do they even know how to read and do basic arithmetic?”
“Hi, Hunter!” Enola said brightly then turned to me. “Beck, before you go, I wanted you to look at my computer code. I was thinking that it might be a more efficient solution to use a class-based program, but then I was reading a white paper by Dr. August Thiele that suggested that functional coding theory would be more appropriate for my application.”
“I think we have it well under control,” Greg said to Hunter smugly. “As you can see, I was correct in my assertions over the last five years that you were doing a less than satisfactory job and I could do a better job of raising our siblings than you.”
“Then maybe I’ll just ship them all here,” Hunter snapped.
“No!” Enola wrinkled her nose. “The boys smell.”
“We have to keep the peace,” Greg said magnanimously. He addressed the office. “Keep in mind, Svensson sisters, you need to have Q3 reports prepped for me next month. I want to see that my investments aren’t going to waste.”
“You can’t expect them to be profitable,” I argued.
“I have high expectations, and I expect everyone to meet them,” Greg replied. “Come. I don’t have all day.”
“Evil plans in motion, brother?” Hunter asked sarcastically.
“You have no idea,” Greg said smugly. In his suit and with his perfectly combed hair, he certainly looked the part of the corporate billionaire overlord, an impressive picture that was immediately shattered as the toddlers raced over to him and wrapped themselves around his legs, wailing.
“No, don’t leave.”
“You saw me this morning,” Greg reminded them, trying to peel their little fingers off his suit pants.
“I want pancakes!” one of the little girls begged.
“Holy smokes.” Greg took a breath. “You need to stay here and make me lots of money.”
“No, I want to color.”
Enola was starting to tense up.
Greg sighed. “Fine. Your billion-dollar ideas will have to wait.” The girls immediately perked up.
Greg turned and strode out of the room, the two toddlers following him like ducklings to the elevator. He held the door for them.
“You’re so domestic,” Hunter said with a smirk.
Greg left the toddlers with coloring books in his office then met us in the conference room.
“Unfortunately, we are not out of the woods yet,” Hunter said, switching into his high-powered attorney mode. “We need these adoptions finalized.”
“None of the other children’s mothers have shown up?” I asked Hunter.
“Not that we have evidence of. Though because Dad is in jail, it does start to make things tricky. He could potentially try and exercise his paternal rights to stop any adoption process.”
“Can he do that?”
“Depends on his lawyer,” Hunter said. “The feds froze all of Leif’s funds, and he doesn’t have a good legal team, only the pro bono lawyers. Though if it comes to it, I’m sure we could have the girls testify about whatever abuse they encountered. No judge is going to be the one to hand innocent, pretty blond girls back to their abusive cult-leader father. So I wouldn’t worry too much about it. The mothers and their families would be more of an issue.”
“Speaking of, Beck, how are you with Annie and Enola’s grandmother?” Greg asked.
“I’ll see her this Friday, and I’m going to bring up the adoption then,” I promised. “I think we’ve gone to enough events with her that hopefully she will agree not to fight us on the adoption.”
And after the adoption, I would have to fire Tess.
