Rebel (Wolfes of Manhattan 1)

And now it was over.15RockI’d grabbed some sweats and a T-shirt and headed for the gym.

I tried several machines, but this manufactured workout couldn’t compare to lifting lumber and pounding nails in the great outdoors.

Man, if there was one thing I hated, it was a manipulative woman. I’d met my share, but the true queen of manipulative women was Constance Larson Wolfe. My mother. I’d watched her manipulate my father, my brothers, even my baby sister. I winced at that one. Connie Wolfe had convinced six-year-old Riley that it was okay for her father to come to her bedroom. That it was just something daughters had to put up with. That it would be over soon. That it had happened to her, and she had turned out just fine.

Yeah, just fine. Thinking it was okay for a man to molest his six-year-old daughter was not “just fine.”

I’d overheard the exchange between my mother and my weeping baby sister. “It hurts, Mommy!”

God. Remembering it made acid creep up my throat.

Whatever my father was doing to Riley, it wouldn’t happen again. I was determined. So I watched. And I waited. And the next time my bastard father sneaked into my little sister’s room, I was ready, butcher knife in hand.

I’d kill the motherfucker.

But at fourteen, I wasn’t as strong as my father. Not as mean, either.

I got a few stabs in, but he overpowered me.

All the time, Riley was crying in her bed. “No, Rock. Stop it! Don’t hurt Daddy!”

Even after what he’d done to her, she still defended him. My bitch mother had brainwashed my beautiful little sister.

I’d ended up in military school. Sent away. No longer able to protect my precious baby sister. My mother and father didn’t let me speak to my brothers before I left. I’d written Roy, telling him he needed to protect Riley, but later he told me over the phone that he never got the letter.

To this day, I didn’t know if my brothers knew what had occurred. I’d detached myself from them, from my whole family. It was the only way to exist. For a while, I thought of them often, but it faded. Even Riley. I couldn’t protect my sister, so I couldn’t let myself think of her. Thinking of her, of what she might be going through, made me rage, and when I raged, I did things I couldn’t do in military school, or I’d have gotten my ass handed to me on a platter. I went through enough during those years as it was.

I smiled slightly. Seeing Riley again had given me some hope. She had grown into a beautiful young woman with a promising career ahead of her. She’d gotten through it. She’d found her strength and she’d persevered.

I could learn from her.

I knew where my strength was. The next thing was to harness it and pour it into Wolfe Enterprises, even though the thought nauseated me.

I left the gym after an hour, not feeling like I’d worked at all. How was I going to survive without the outdoors?

I sighed, heading back up to my suite. I’d do it. I had to.

I waved the keycard in front of the lock and then opened the door, hoping Lacey was still there. I’d love another fuck, and perhaps I’d been too hard on her. Now that I thought about it, maybe she’d just been trying to help me. To convince me that I could do what I had to do.

“Lacey?” I walked in.

She wasn’t in the living area. She wasn’t in the bedroom. Not in the bathroom.

I was alone.Reid had texted me to be at the office at nine o’clock Monday morning. I arrived at nine fifteen, wearing a clean pair of jeans and my best shirt—a white cotton button-down. No tie. I didn’t own one. I stopped to tell the receptionist who I was, and she directed me to my father’s—my—office.

Reid was already there. “You’re late.”

A boyish-looking man stood next to him.

“Since I’m the boss, apparently, I guess I can be late if I want.”

“Dieter is here to measure you for clothing, and his time doesn’t come cheap.”

“Ah. Well, Dieter,” I said to the man who looked like he couldn’t be more than nineteen, “you’ll be well compensated. As the newly minted CEO of Wolfe Enterprises, I hereby double whatever you’ve been getting.”

“The company doesn’t pay for your clothes, Rock.”

“They don’t? Then fuck this shit. I’m instituting a new dress code. Jeans and T-shirts.”

“We’re business casual on Fridays,” Reid said. “And you’ll be paying for your own clothes.”

“With Dad’s money.”

“With your share of Dad’s money,” Reid corrected me. “Dieter has been tailoring my clothes for a year now. His father was Dad’s tailor. He retired last year.”

“Great.”

“I need to get your measurements, Mr. Wolfe,” Dieter said in a slight German accent. He came at me with a tape measure.