Blackmailed by the Billionaire Brothers: The Complete Series by Sylvia Banks Read Free Book Online Page A

usual, I tuned her out holding the phone away
from my ear, until…
    “… your cousin wants to retire…”
    “Wait, what?” I pulled the
phone back to attention.
    “Yeah, Phil. He wants to
retire.”
    “What about his shop?”
    “Well,” Mother’s accent grew
thicker. She’d gotten my attention and knew it. “If you called your sista , she would have told ya .”
    “Mom, why can’t you tell me?”
    “Nobody listens to me…”
    Yeah, I wonder why. Instead of
telling me herself, she rambled on about how her family treated her like a second class citizen.
    “Mom…I’m at work, I have to go.
Love you!” Click. Hopefully, it would take her another two minutes to realize
I’d hung up on her. I loved my mother, but listening to her much ado about less
than nothing was enough to make me want to go deaf. My sister would give it to
me straight. I flipped to my favorite contacts and dialed my sister, Rachel.
    She answered her phone.
“Hello?”
    “ Sisssta !”
I smiled every time I heard her voice. “How are you?”
    I heard a squeal on the other
end. She blared her happiness so loud I pulled my phone away from my ear. “ Woah , woah , Rachel.” We were
always excited to hear from each other but this was a bit over the top. “Calm
down.”
    “Fabulous, you’ll never guess!
Phil wants to retire.”
    “Yeah, mom told me.”
    Another squeal. Then she said,
“He wants to give it over to you!”
    Give what? And then it hit me.
His bakery. He wanted to give his bakery to me? My phone slipped from my hand
and it clattered to the floor. I pounced to the ground on my hands and knees
scooping my phone up. “Wait…what are you talking about?”
    “Mom heard he was going to
retire and she nagged him to death. He’ll stay on part time till the end of the
lease!”
    There was one stipulation. “But
he’s all the way in Brooklyn.”
    Chicago was far enough away
from mom that she couldn’t just drop by any o’ time. Mother was the whole point
of moving from Brooklyn. None of her children had lives as long as they stayed
in New York.
    The option of having a bakery
but having mom being able to drop by was enough to make me rethink the offer.
“I’d like to call him and talk to him,” I said.
    “Fab, this is what you’ve
always wanted, right?”
    “Yeah, but…mom.”
    “You know that’s just an
excuse.” Her squealing stopped. Rachel understood. She’d moved further away,
going all the way to Oregon. Of course mother complained that all her children
were scattered across the continent but she’d complain if they were under her
roof too.
    “Besides, it’s your dream?”
Rachel said.
    I didn’t know what to do. Yes,
I wanted my own bakery. Phil’s was established and profitable. Having a
business already going strong had advantages over starting anew. But starting
anew meant any mistakes were mine. Of course being with family was a
plus—even if mother had driven me and my sister away, it’d really been for the good of our independence. And then there was Warren’s
blackmail.
    What would papa think? Mom
would surely disown me from the family—for about a day. Then I’d never
hear the end of it. Her Brooklyn accent resonated in my head. Have you met my dauwghta ?
The one who has sex with her bauws at the office? Yeah, I’d hear that until she went to the grave. Probably
beyond the grave.
    Shaking from my thoughts, I
returned to the conversation with Rachel. “It is my dream, but shouldn’t I
start my own business?”
    There was a pause from Rachel, then she said, “You don’t want to take over a family
business?”
    True it was sacrilege in my
family to let a business close without passing it down, especially when someone
had the talent for such business, but… “I wanted to go to culinary school
first. Wouldn’t it make more sense if I did that?”
    “But you’re already a fabulous
baker,” Rachel said. I could hear her smile working in my pet name. “And you
can make it your own by