Chapter Six: Ain't No Rest For The Wicked

The Defense Rests

“To Ivanov Corp and the outside world, Brad was known as Bradford Stevenson, the ruthless attorney for Ivanov Corp itself
To his father, mother, and Christian: the CEO of Ivanov Corp, Brad was known in secret as Bradford Ivanov, the child that shouldn't be, but was.
Yet to the one and only Joan Marie...
the most beautiful woman he had ever laid his eyes upon, and all that he desired as his...
Brad was simply just Brad.
It was something that Brad had quickly fallen in love with…
along with falling for her, the one woman who truly saw him for who he was
and every possibility of who he could be.”

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My father was home.

Well, the father that became my father all those years ago.

And while I was sort of forced to always welcome his visits because they were few and far between considering his research work overseas... I was left with the unfortunate inevitability that I would be dealing with a man damn near identical to the bane of my existence. My brother.

Only our father had a rather sadistic, fearful nature about him that Christian didn't have the power to own.

Christian and I had visited my mother the morning after our enormous amount of time spent in the office the night before when my true identity was unfortunately revealed, and we had no choice but to tell her.

And as always, I was the punctual one come morning.

I had first attempted to give the woman a call during my drive from my more private home. However, I knew that she would be up by now, given the time was closer to seven in the morning. When I was found with no answer, I simply pulled into the front of her estate, parked, and as soon as I made it closer to the entrance, I noticed that one of my mother's staff was tending to the front garden of the estate itself. She was quick to let me in, yet the expression on her face was more worrisome if anything.

"Is everything alright, Miriam?" I asked the older woman as she dusted her hands on the chestnut brown apron she was wearing before pulling some of those short, greying curls back behind her ears. There was barely any light out, yet I could still see the hesitancy written on her porcelain face as she rushed for the front door.

"Y-Yes," she replied even more hesitantly in her still, as always, kind tone. "Why don't you make yourself comfortable in one of the living rooms? I'll fetch you some tea, then inform your mother of your arrival."

I gave her a firm nod, offering a kind, small smile in return as we entered the large estate together. There was some worry that perhaps my mother had already found out about our breach in security... but that wouldn't have been possible. Besides, there were many reasons why her home attendants could worry. My mother was a... rather particular woman… with even more particular tastes.

And so I did as told. Kicking off my shoes, I made my way through the thoroughly lit home to the living room located closest to the stairs leading up to my mother's quarters and took a seat on the couch. Very soon after, I was thanking Miriam, who was quick to fetch some tea for me after having washed her hands and removed her dirtied apron.

While I wasn't a man who liked to wait for anyone, I was used to it with my mother. Her furniture was also quite comfortable, and now, being dressed in my usual attire—my firmly pressed suit as opposed to my workout clothes from the night before—it felt like it always did whenever I visited. And I felt much more like myself than the state the prior night had left me in.

The only thing telling was my exhaustion. I had slept horribly through the night, and there was no rectifying the bags under my eyes.