The Note by Natalie Wrye (the read aloud family .TXT) 📕

“It wouldn’t matter now, Noah. You’re the head of Quinn Real Estate Group now. You’re the CEO.”

As if sleeping with Jase was a consolation prize now, since the power structure had shifted.

Which is all Ainsley obviously ever gave a shit about.

As if it weren’t abundantly clear.

Ainsley had never been the woman for me. She’d never been the woman for anyone.

A private school grad more concerned about the couture she was wearing than the soul beneath it, she’d seem sweet when we first met at the tender age of eighteen at a college business school mixer. Smart, even.

And she sure knew how to handle her scotch.

But I’d mistaken her calculations for sophistication, had erred in believing that the sweet blonde affection was more than an act.

It was evident as I stare at her now that she’d been planning to sleep her way to the top of a real estate empire all along.

Because women like Ainsley wanted to eat at the top of the food chain, and in her mind, Jase had been the fucking filet mignon when Grandfather Quinn had passed away two years after our relationship started.

Only once my brother had lost the head position of our real estate company to me, he’d lost his appeal to Ainsley.

Her being here solidified that fact.

I’d been around rich people all my life. Had lived among the liars. Hell, I’d been one of the best of them.

But for the first time in my life, I wasn’t content being one of them anymore. As with scotch, I’d lost the taste for lying. Especially to myself.

Reaching out, I grab Ainsley’s shoulders, shaking them softly, finding the truth hard to keep in.

“Is that what you want, Ainsley?” I hiss into her face, pressing even closer, my fingers clasped around her small arms. “You want to root the CEO? Fuck the man on top? Will that make you feel like a winner? A queen Bee?” I stare into a face I’d once believed was pretty, now grotesque from the inside out.

“How’s it feel now? To come back to nothing, crash a wedding all to get back into the good graces of the head of a failing company?” Her green eyes widen and I keep going. “How’s it feel to fish for a man on a sinking ship?”

But her eyes no longer look at me. They shoot over my shoulder.

I turn at the sound of a footstep to find Jase, fully dressed in his midnight-black tuxedo, a deep frown printed on his normally stoic face. He gazes at me.

“Noah.” His voice is silk over stone, rough underneath a veneer of composure. “Can I talk to you?” He glances at Ainsley. “Alone?”

His tone leaves no room for questions to be asked, and I let Ainsley go, releasing each finger one by one until she’s out from my grasp.

The ghost that’d been haunting every relationship I’ve had for seven years strolls towards the bedroom door, bypassing Jase along the way. She smiles up into his face, but his expression is stone.

With nothing but ice and indifference left for her, Ainsley casts a backward glance over her shoulder before heading out, and I know it will be the last time I hear from the woman who’d stolen my heart.

Problem is? She never gave it back.

I’d left it with her those seven years ago.

But with Sophia in my life, I was starting to grow a new one. I just don’t know if it’s big enough to face Jase right now, and I turn, gathering myself by the window, my hair in my hands as I wring my fingers through the strands, a futile attempt to calm my frustration.

I leave my back to my brother, not turning. “Jase, I’d rather not talk right now. You can go back to your people. I’ll be out in a minute.”

“Tough.” I hear behind me, his footsteps closing in. “You’re my people. And we’re going to have this out right now. You. And me.” He scoffs. “Something we should have done a hell of a long time ago.”

“Don’t do this,” I growl. “Not unless you want to fight.”

“Then let’s fight.” I hear rustling behind me and still I don’t spin to face him. “Come on. Let’s go…” I hear him exhale, the sound hard. “Because I’ve had enough with the secrets. The lying. The pretending. Ignoring the issues and bullshit right in front of us.”

I release my hair from beneath my fingers, pivoting towards my older sibling. His tuxedo jacket’s off, his hair newly mussed. He stands there, unhooking the cuffs of his collared shirt, and seconds later, he pushes the crisp white fabric up to his elbows, revealing ready fists.

His forearms pulse as he plants himself inside the bedroom, staring at me. His face is full of barely contained rage, and I glance into his simmering brown eyes so much like mine.

Where Lachlan and Jase had brown eyes and sandy-colored hair, my locks were dark and thick, my irises dark blue.

The difference between us was palpable—if anyone cared to look, but it was everything else: the way we stood, the furrow in our brows when we were angry, that same never-back-down Quinn energy that made us brothers more than anything else, of the same blood above all.

After Grandfather Quinn’s confession about my mother’s affair and my father, I never thought I’d see myself in my siblings again. But as Jase confronts me, angry and outraged, I realize that my brothers and I are exactly alike…

Hardheaded.

I’d projected perfection because all my life I felt I didn’t belong and it isn’t until now, standing here hours before Jase’s wedding, that I realize I’ve been staring into a mirror all along.

My shoulders slump, one hand going to my hip. “Is that your solution?” I wave towards Jase’s balled-up fist. “You’re going to fight me to get me to talk?’

My brother nods. “If that’s what it takes.”

“You’ve never won a fight between us and you never will.”

“At least I can say I’ve tried. Mindy knows a lot of tricks to