Page 58 of My Bossy Billionaire Attorney

“No,” I shake my head briskly. “I am sorry, and I promise that I didn’t read anything.”

He chuckles dryly. “Do you honestly expect me to believe that? You want me to believe that you saw nothing when you went through my wastebasket, and I have nothing to worry about even though you saw something and now you are just lying to me to cover it up.”

For some reason, I find myself smiling. “Would you believe that?”

Michael sighs.

“It’s fine. I shouldn’t have left it lying around. The study door is always locked but since the housekeeper wasn’t coming today, I was a little careless. The living room—you remember where it is, right?”

I nod briskly.

“Good. I’ll meet you there in a couple minutes.”

I don’t wait to be told again before turning on my heels and walking away. I don’t turn around until I get to the living room and the only turning I do is to sit my ass down.

What was that?

The paper I saw looked like a note from a therapy session, albeit one that had Michael talking about everything that happened between his father and his mother when he was younger and relating it to why he is the way he is. It didn’t conclusively say that but...

A dad who never had time for his family and put his career before being a husband and a parent. Who forced him into the limelight, even though it wasn’t where he wanted to be. The paper also talked about how his parents put on a show in public for everyone to see while the family was in shambles at home.

There was pain in the words.

The pretense.

The hypocrisy.

The lies.

The real picture behind the glamour.

Michael used words like that.

Then his mother left his father as soon as he retired to marry the man she had been sleeping with while they were married. And his father, finally seeing that he had treated her wrongly tried to win her back.

How he, Michael, wished they had divorced decades ago. How he was the only one who bore witness to the ugliness behind the scenes.

I sigh.

“Is that why he is the way he is? Hard on the inside, while struggling to be alright on the outside?” I muse.

In some ways, Michael Stone and I are alike. The only difference is that I didn’t learn to hide my bitterness. I used it to lash out at everyone who hurt me, even though I still strived to win my father’s approval.

“Are you ok, you look lost in thought,” he says finding me.

A sigh slips past my lips as I watch Michael walk into the living room. My heart goes out to him but I quickly hide the sympathy from my eyes, knowing he would resent me for it.

“It’s nothing,” I say, my lips pursed. “Just my life in general. I’m so scared of going to prison. For life. Do you know what they do to people like me in prison?”

I wasn’t thinking about prison before he walked in the room but saying the words brings goose bumps to my arms. I rub them.

“I don’t want to go there. Please tell me you have something that can help my case.”

He nods and sits beside me. “Yes, I do.”

Then he hands me a couple of pictures. I flip through them and see that they are all of the same man coming and going from one particular shop. I know the man is Eric, Brandon’s supposed friend who he had a falling out with, but I don’t know anything about the shop.

“What is this?”

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