Page 18 of 10,000 Hours With A Rich Menace

I spent every birthday alone. My brother and sisters called to wish me a happy birthday and sent flowers to the house that I saw when I returned home from Aspen.

Always in Aspen.

“I’m hungry as fuck,” Landon sat his bookbag down, and crossed the room to sit behind my desk.

I bit the inside of my cheek as I watched him move the paper weight and other shit that I had strategically placed on my desk. “Eat when you’re done telling me this twenty-four-hour news.”

He opened his laptop. “I was going over Case House Vegas numbers the other day, and shit not adding up.”

I didn’t trust many, so when it came to doing things in house, I made sure that it was my family. Landon was in college now for cyber security, but he had graduated with a bachelor’s degree in accounting.

It was Core who told me to force him to go back for that second degree. Landon had always been into whatever Core was in, and seeing the knowledge that he knew without a degree was some wicked shit.

“I don’t like when shit don’t add up, Don,” I replied, going back to my newspaper, figuring I could finish this article while he ran down whatever to me.

“Me either… Ryan hit me up and told me that new nigga ain’t been moving right… said shit been missing, and he been scheduling girls for shit outside of the app.”

I put the newspaper down and looked across the room. “Oh word?”

“Stealing from us is wild… Kennedy told me that he approached her first, and she told him that she only does work that is coming from the app and has your approval. The other girls that he has been using are new.”

“Why the fuck is Kennedy telling you anything, Don?”

He sucked his teeth and continued on his computer. “Why we focusing on the wrong shit? I happened to be in Vegas and ran into her… damn.”

“Why the fuck you in Vegas, Landon?” I questioned.

He looked up from his computer. “My fucking business… I’m not a fucking little boy no more… I’m twenty-four, and don’t need you worried about why I’m somewhere. I ran into Kennedy; we went to dinner, and I sent her on the way. She was out there with her girls, and I was out there with a shorty I’m messing with.”

“And had time to go and have dinner with another woman… lie to me again.”

Landon bit back his remark and then looked at me. “I know because you don’t have shit else to do but have scheduled nap times and shit, that worrying about what me, Zoya, and Kora are doing is the only entertainment that you have. I didn’t come over here for a lecture about who I can be around… I’m not fucking Kennedy.”

I folded the newspaper up, no longer interested in the current events in the world. “It’s only you and Zoya that give meproblems… she wants to keep fucking with a nigga whose days are limited, and you want to test the waters of Case House.”

“We’re grown, Mens… respect that shit. Everybody can’t be perfect like Kora.”

I looked at my brother, and then at the book on the side table. It was wrong to toss that shit at his head.

Yeah. It was wrong to throw things at him.

“Kora knows that I do everything in her best interest. Where have I ever steered her wrong? It’s you and Zoya’s ass that need to understand the same thing and it would be peaceful around here.”

“This why you spend holidays alone,” he mumbled as he continued to type on his computer, and I looked at my watch.

I hadn’t spent a holiday with my siblings since they went away to college. They used to come home, then that stopped. Holidays weren’t big in our family, and they usually just sent holiday wishes in the form of a text message.

Last Christmas, Kora came over and chilled with me for the day. Me and Kora were naturally closer than the younger siblings. Where me and Kora stuck together, Landon and Zoya did the same thing.

Of course they would, they were the two causing me the most headaches with their bullshit. Zoya did everything when it came to going to college and then law school, down to her career. When it came to her personal life, she didn’t take any advice and did shit to spite me. She knew her nigga’s days were limited, and she wanted to lay up with him and play stepmother.

Zoya’s ass loved to shop, so I knew her ass had some designer black outfit to wear when they lowered that nigga in the ground.

“Like I was saying,” Don snapped his fingers, getting my attention because I was focused on something else. “These new bitches and that new nigga that Ryan put on been stealing.”

“Hmm.”

“Hmm?” Landon mocked, trying to figure out where my head was at.

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