The Billionaire's Step Desire (Bareback Billionaire Taboo Steamy Romance) Read Online Free Page B

the company Sarah’s grandpa left her when he died. Money meant power, and my father wasn’t going to let it slip away…
     
    If Sarah said I was being a brat, there was no chance for me to tell my side of the story. If Sarah accused me of making a mess or lying about something, I wouldn’t even have the opportunity to object. It didn’t matter how flimsy her evidence was. My father believed her, and in the process, he alienated me.
     
    I lost the man who had raised me since my own mother had died when I was six. It was a vicious blow, and one I don’t think I would have ever recovered from had it not been for Jacob.
     
    I hadn’t expected my new older brother—stepbrother, really—to come to my rescue. I hadn’t expected anything from him at all. For the first few years we lived together in his mother’s expensive home, Sarah made it clear he was her baby, her pride and joy, the one and only child she would ever love. I figured he would have reaped the benefits from that and ignored what it did to me, but to my surprise, Jacob began to protest right around the time he turned fifteen. The boy who had hardly said two words to me in years began to speak on my behalf, always to his mother’s horror, and soon he was inviting me to enjoy all the riches his mother had brought to the table.
     
    When Jacob got some fancy new gift, he asked me to come play with it. When Jacob got to go to some swanky party or sold-out concert, he brought me along at his side. When Jacob got to take his mother’s AmEx card to the mall, he insisted I come along so that he’d know what clothes to buy me.
     
    Those moments with Jacob were the only happy ones I had living in that house with his mother and my enabling father. When he moved out at eighteen, I was completely devastated, even though I understood his reasons. By that time, he’d pretty much burned his bridges with his mother. He needed a less toxic environment to spend his life in.
     
    Luckily for him, his grandfather had left him a sum of money to be paid out on his eighteenth birthday. He showed me the bank account once. I’d never seen so many zeroes in my life. Two and a half billion dollars! As a result, Jacob was now independently wealthy, which meant he hardly had to worry about finding a place to stay.
     
    Seven years later, here I was, nineteen and finally freeing myself of the same chains Jacob had shrugged off years before me. It felt good, but also a little scary, mainly because I didn’t have the same kind of safety net that Jacob did. I wasn’t a billionaire.
     
    The other reason I had misgivings were because of my dad. I loved him more than anything in the world, but I couldn’t stick around with him the way things were. I knew he was afraid to be alone, but that didn’t mean I had to stay and let Sarah make me miserable. Besides, she hadn’t seemed too upset when I’d said I was leaving.
     
    “Come on,” Jacob said, interrupting my conflicting thoughts, “let’s go inside. I’ve got your room all ready for you. I hope you like it.”
     
    “I’m sure I will,” I assured him with a smile, looking up at the massive luxury apartment building my stepbrother called home.
     
    I was happy we didn’t have to walk up any stairs to get to our floor. Jacob had a penthouse near the very top, and the elevator ride was long enough as it was. We didn’t say much to one another at that point, but I knew he would want to talk soon. After all, we’d hardly spoken to each other since Jacob had moved out. Sarah had pretty much forbade it, dismissing Jacob as a “lost cause.” I wasn’t even allowed to say his name in her house.
     
    When the elevator doors finally opened, I found myself staring at what looked like, for all intents and purposes, an outdoor entryway. There were potted plants in the short hall leading up to a set of wooden double doors with a short awning over them, and the dim light gave it the illusion of sundown.
     
    “That’s…