Page 83 of The Professor's Possession (Crystal River Billionaire Brothers)

I think about going over and speaking to him, but the professor looks concerned as he talks on the phone. It’s the same facial expression as what he had at the coffee shop in town that time I saw him. Maybe he’s even on the phone with the same person. A whole lot of random scenarios filter through my mind.

I’m getting obsessed.

But, as I walk past him, I can’t help but wonder how very little I know about the man.

Would he even acknowledge me? Or is our casual fling completely over?

38

SPENCER

Even after all these years,pulling up outside my childhood home is still a very momentous occasion. Seeing my father in the flesh always is.

I nod to the three security guards outside my family’s heavily protected mansion on the outskirts of Crystal River, and they quickly let me through the high-security gates that lead into the impressive compound. This place is just one of a dozen of homes my parents own all over the globe, but it is by far their favorite. Crystal River is my ancestral home, and my family feels most comfortable here despite our New York City penthouses and Martha's Vineyard estate and chateaus in the south of France. Our mansion here may not be as spacious or as modern as our other luxury homes, but it has a century of memories and history associated behind its walls. And Crystal River – as a small town - is quiet, far away from the lowly millionaires and pent-up wannabes of the bigger cities. We’re billionaires and we don’t need to prove ourselves in society: we’re above all that. This town, and this mansion, are where we can simplyrelax.

The place is designed in a Colonial Revival style, with a simplicity to its grandness. Large windows. Victorian features. White columns supporting a portico. The mansion is swathed in a dark red brick. It’s the definition ofclassy.

I park my car on the gravel outside the main porch and ring the doorbell of the mansion. One of the butlers answers it. He’s new, but he knows who I am. Everyone who works for my father has to learn the faces of each of his six boys as a prerequisite.

“I’m here to see my father,” I tell him. “It should have been scheduled into his diary, is that correct?”

“He’s been expecting you. Right this way, sir.”

Yeah, I have to schedule with my father’s secretary to even get some face time with him, but the good thing about Waylen Penmayne is that - despite the multi-national media empire he runs - he will always make time to see family. Our family is our pride. We each value it. Without family, we are nothing. Even with all the money in the world.

Inside the house hangs portraits of our ancestors. Long dead members of a wide family tree. Us Penmaynes have always been a rich and influential family, most notably in Crystal River and the wider state, but my father’s creation of his international media empire really rocketed us to the big leagues, to put it mildly. For an outsider, this mansion would be an imposing place to set foot in, and deliberately so. It’s almost like an extension of my father’s overbearing personality.

The main centerpiece of the stately foyer is a widespread staircase that rises up to the heavens flanked by a carved wooden banister.

My father is at his desk on the top floor of the mansion. From behind his chair are tall, tinted windows that look out onto the grounds. We own a lot of land around Crystal River, but real estate has never been our family’s passion; we’ve just naturally acquired it over the years. Father’s media empire is what truly drives him, and that’s what he’s working on when I enter his office.

It’s funny being in here. This was the room in the house when us brothers were growing up that we were banned from. You can’t run the biggest media company in the world when there are seven boys that want your attention and pretending to have laser sword fights around your desk.

It’s that same desk that I sit at now, opposite my father. Like me, he’s wearing a tailored suit straight from London’s Savile Row.

“Always nice to see you, Spencer,” my father says as I take my seat, leaning back in his leather chair as he turns off his computer monitor to focus all his attention on me.

“Father.”

He’s still got a full head of hair. His once-black strands have slowly evolved into a dark silver. As a man in his twenties, my father was well-regarded as a well-spoken bachelor. The prize of all women who knew him. But he never tied his heart down to a girl. Not until he met my mother. She was the one woman to make this rich playboy embrace the unthinkable:monogamy.

“I saw you put in some face-to-face time in my diary today,” Father observes. “Any reason why?”

“A mere catch-up,” I reply.

“Ah. Well, you should see your mother on the way out. She wants to see you. Give her some love.”

My father speaks to me in French, moving seamlessly from English to a perfect Gallic accent.

“Mother is here?” I ask, meeting his language change.

“She’s at a charity event but should be back by helicopter any time now.”

“Ah.”

My eyes wander to my father’s impressive desk. He’s got a framed photo of us as a complete family when us boys were all teenagers. You can tell it’s from the deep past because my late brother Arthur is there. Smiling his beautiful smile.

There’s another framed photo of Arthur sitting next to the family one. It’s just him, holding aloft a gold trophy. A state running race he’d won easily, I remember. Mother has removed all the photos of Arthur from around the house because it’s too hard for her to bear to see his handsome face smiling from beyond the grave, but this office is Father’s sanctuary. This is the one place he can keep his memory of Arthur alive.

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