Page 22 of Boss's Fake Wife

I bolted upright, my heart pounding, feeling disoriented. I tore my hand through my hair, feeling the air settle coldly on my skin. Fuck. Talk about a wet dream turning into a fucking nightmare.

It wasn’t the first time I dreamed of Dom after his death, but it was the first time the dream had been quite like this.

“My daughter.”

I remembered his furious voice in the dream and the way he’d glared at me.

What the fuck was that? Why had I dreamt of that?

Was it guilt? A prick of conscience?

I got up and started pacing the length of my room, trying to clear my head once more. Sleep was the furthest thing from my mind, so I picked up my phone to respond to emails in the meantime and noticed a missed call from Ansel, followed by a series of messages. I went through them but couldn’t really make sense of what he was trying to say. Some of them were pictures of Emily and another man. A boyfriend? They looked pretty chummy.

The jealousy I felt was completely uncalled for, but I couldn’t help it at the same time.

There was also another picture of me and Dom. He was almost smiling in the picture, which was a change.

I sighed and rubbed my hand against my face, analyzing the picture.

As I’d told her, I met him in San Francisco during a low point in my life. It was one of the first times I tried to escape from The Brotherhood. The cops had tried to pin something on me, and The Brotherhood was going to let me take the fall for it.

So I ran away rather than go down for a crime I didn’t commit. And I stayed away for a whole month.

At the time, I stayed with a random, broke college student in a one-bedroom apartment. Dom. I’d randomly met him in a bar, and we strangely hit it off.

He told me about this crazy business idea he had. A recyclable waste company that collected waste around the city and turned it into renewable energy generators for smaller homes. He’d been struggling to get funding for the idea, and it was making him depressed.

He was only half serious and likely half drunk when he told me the plan, but for some reason, it struck me as something feasible.

It was rusty for sure, but I immediately knew it had potential. Most people would have left it at that and brushed it off as little more than the drunken imagination of a madman, but I invited him back to Philly when he graduated. I polished up the idea, and then I told him exactly what to do to get it up and running. Then, I gave him the initial capital, drawing it out with the excuse of some money for a friend.

Over the years, I continued to help him grow it into a small company that served a purpose. I tidied him up, sobered him up, and trained him on how to attend meetings to show the viability of the company. I set him up with the right contacts.

And then, just like that, the business, Revit Renewables, grew wings, attracting investors.

Unfortunately, you could take the man out of the street, but you couldn’t take the street out of the man.

Having been poor all his life, his first taste of wealth rushed to his head. He squandered most of his fortune on gambling and drinking. And then, when his disease came, he sold more and more shares to be able to afford his medication.

The problem was that the shares I had now were basically useless because I couldn’t show my face or make any decisions in the company. The vultures he sold it to didn’t understand the business fundamentally and were just going to milk it for what it was worth before running it into the ground entirely.

I couldn’t let that happen. The business was my way out, my way to escape this life.

The first call I made that night was to Ansel. He didn’t pick up, which was irritating, but the man had probably been working nonstop to find the information. He could always tell me tomorrow.

Next, I called Mansen. Mansen was the lawyer who had drafted up Dom and my business arrangement agreement. I’d picked him because he had no affiliation with The Brotherhood but was still corrupt enough to draft up the document shielding my identity as an investor. He was also the one in charge of Dom’s will.

“It’s midnight,” he said by way of greeting.

“That’s why I keep you on retainer,” I replied. “How come you haven’t invited Dom’s daughter for the reading of his will?”

He was silent for a few seconds. “She’s in town?”

“Yes,” I said.Lazy bastard probably just didn’t want to go through the trouble.

“Alright,” he said, sounding unsure. “I guess I can arrange it for this Saturday.”

“Not so fast,” I said. “Here’s what we do instead. We’re going to hold off on it for now until I figure something out.”

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