Page 100 of My Brother's Billionaire Best Friends
“Well. Guess you do now.”
It all makes sense now. Every piece of sabotage. Every shadow move. Vivian didn’t just fund Icon. She was sleeping with itsarchitect. The whole rivalry, the calculated chaos, the noise—it wasn’t just personal. It was intimate. Twisted.
She’s been playing both sides for years. The instigator. The victim. Whatever suited her purposes in that moment.
“Plans within plans.” She said that a lot when I was growing up. This was her plan within the plan—using a so-called rival firm to shore up anything she couldn’t let sully VT Global.
I sit back hard in the chair, the plastic armrests digging into my elbows. My ears are ringing. My chest is tight. She didn’t just betray me.
She used me.
My own mother torched my name, sabotaged my career, and then whispered sweet nothings in the ear of the enemy. The enemy who sent Vanessa to destroy me.
Is that why Vanessa dated me?
“Gavin,” Jamison says gently, waving his hand in my face.
I look up, eyes burning.
He doesn’t say anything else. He just reaches across the table, covers my hand with his, and holds it there. The thing I always needed.
The thing Vivian convinced me I would never have.
For the first time in my life, I believe that my father didn’t leave me. Vivian took me from him. She took everything from me.
And I’m going to get it back.
24
HARRISON
I can’t stop checkingthe door.
It’s not because I’m anxious—at least not in the obvious way. It’s more like my body’s learned the habit. Years of waiting for bad news to walk through that frame, for someone to enter a room and quietly decide I’m no longer useful. That’s what happens when you grow up scraping for space in other people’s shadows—you learn to study exits, anticipate tone shifts, sense when the rug is about to be yanked out from under you.
Today, Gavin’s holding the rug.
The boardroom is full. All twelve seats. A few junior partners are standing along the walls, eyes wide, probably wondering why they were asked to observe an unscheduled closed-door meeting with paper folders stacked neatly in front of each nameplate. I’m seated two down from Gavin at the head of the table. Jack’s beside me. Despite his public resignation, he’s here—collared shirt rolled at the sleeves.
When I asked him why he showed, he said, “Gavin shouldn’t have to say this shit twice.”
Fair enough.
The folders are heavy. Each one matte black, no labels. I don’t need to open mine to know what’s inside. I helped assemble them last night with one of our trusted assistants, triple-checked each one, sealed them by hand. The weight isn’t just paper. It’s history. Rot. Evidence of everything we’ve tolerated under the guise of legacy, efficiency, family.
Vivian.
Her fingerprints are everywhere in this company—on the board, on the culture, on the unspoken rules, on hirings and firings that got her where she is. But now her name is at the top of every file. And this time, there’s no PR spin. No rewriting the narrative. No redirection to protect the brand.
Gavin sits like stone. You wouldn’t know his whole world cracked open two days ago when he walked out of his dad’s house with a new version of his childhood buried under his ribs.
He just says, “You can open them now.”
The sound of cardboard sliding back, paper rustling, plastic sleeves being lifted—it fills the room in a slow, horrified wave.
I open mine with everyone else, even though I already know what I’ll see. The list is on top.
People Vivian targeted, directly or through Icon PR—some bribed into silence, others nudged into loyalty with favors, others torn down. The next page is a network map. Names connected by favor, by threat, by backroom deals, by pure blackmail.
