Zander's Firecracker Read online

  I roll my eyes. “Whatever. I still don’t care for the way this Alexa person is handling things. I mean, for one thing, what you said doesn’t explain why she didn’t want to share the digital simulation of the display. I’m really not sure about this. Did you actually take a look at the notes she sent us via email? They were a total mess!”

  “So she’s messy. People don’t have to be tidy, control maniacs like you to know how to do their job.”

  He really doesn’t understand what I’m saying here.

  “How are we supposed to know if she’s following Mom’s project or how the display is gonna look like if she doesn’t show us anything?”

  “We’ll ask her when we meet her.”

  “And when will that be?”

  “In two days, at the estate.”

  I groan. “I’d still really like to talk to her before we get there.”

  “Why? So you can nitpick everything she says and fire the poor girl? No, it’s better this way, trust me… it’s better for all of us, her in particular: we’re delaying the migraines you’re gonna give her for at least another two days this way.”

  I scowl.

  Well, fuck.

  Seems for once I can’t readily take over something and get it done right.

  I have no choice but to wait for this Alexa person to show up.

  My jaw starts to twitch.

  I so don’t like this.

  “Fucking asshole, some brother you are!” I mutter.

  Anthony laughs. “I’m the best brother, I haven’t killed you yet, have I?”

  I punch him on the shoulder, and he lets out an exaggerated growl of pain.

  “I’d better get going, before your sister-in-law sends out a search party,” Anthony says and takes his phone out of his cargo pants’ pocket. “I almost forgot…”

  “What?” I ask absentmindedly, my attention already turning to the lawsuit and all the depositions’ papers I have to go through before we leave for Lake Tahoe. I might as well focus on something productive rather than worry about a situation I can’t fix yet.

  He throws an arm around me and snaps a picture of us. “She wanted proof I actually wore this damn shirt to the office.”

  I laugh, following him out.

  He stops and turns serious for a moment. “Coming to dinner tonight?”

  I shake my head. “No can’t do. I’ve got to work.”

  He sighs as he scans his thumbprint to start my private elevator. “You always have to work, Zander. That’s the problem.”

  I look away and down at my shoes. I haven’t been social at all in the last month or so, not even with my family. I’m gonna have to make it up to them, especially the little ones.

  The elevator’s doors slide open with a swishing sound and my brother turns to look at me again. “Zan, simmer the fuck down about this display thing, okay? Stop obsessing. Aside from sucking all the fun out of this, you’re doing great. You still stink big time for hauling my ass here on my downtime, but Mom would be proud of you if she were here. And not just for the party. Don’t think I don’t know how much you look after all of us. I’m only asking you to let us do the same for you, okay?”

  I nod. It means a lot to me that he thinks our mother would be happy. I feel tears sting the back of my eyes and I blink them away.

  “Tony?”

  “Yeah?”

  “She’d be proud of you too, you know.”

  Anthony steps up to me and goes for a hug that turns into a chokehold at the last second. “Love you too, lil’ bro, but don’t go all mushy on me now.”

  I push him away and chuck him on his back. “Actually, you’re the one who started all the mushiness first, I was only following: can’t be blamed for setting the tone.”

  “Lawyers,” mutters my brother glowering my way, but he’s smiling when he gets into the elevator.

  I turn to walk back into my office with a sigh, a tiny part of my brain still stubbornly thinking about this disrespectful Alexa chick.

  Chapter 2

  ALEXA

  June 29th

  I’ve been on the Markos Estate for a little over three hours now. They were kind enough to offer me the use of one of their jets to get here straight from Atlanta to this huge, magnificent and totally unbelievable place.

  They have their own airstrip and helipad here and I’m pretty sure I was rooted to the spot, looking around like a ninny with my mouth hanging open for a good five minutes after we deplaned.

  The view of the snowy tops of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in the backdrop with the green rolling lawns and the vast expanse of perfectly blue sky reflected off the pristine surface of the lake alone could have already shocked me into motionless, but the mansion!

  Never seen anything even remotely similar in my life.

  Then this woman, Laurel —Mr. Zander Markos’s PA— steps up to me, pointing to it and tells me: ‘If you’d be so kind to follow me, Miss Tinley… that’s the guest house, you’ll be living there during your stay on the estate.’

  I swear to God, my eyes were gonna fall off and that’s when I looked up, and up, and up, beyond the green valleys, and saw the real mansion.

  I mean, the ‘guest house’ is ginormous —I was told by Laurel it has forty bedrooms and five kitchens— and it still looks like a freaking dollhouse compared to the family mansion.

  My family’s company is doing extremely well and it’s not like we’re paupers or anything, we cleared half a billion last year alone, and still our fortune is nothing compared to the wealth of these people, they probably earn the same quantity of money in a week, possibly less. We’re doing great, sure, but the Markos are in a league of their own.

  I’ve been fighting my way through life the only girl in a house with four protective, overbearing giant bears for brothers and there’s very little that can intimidate me, but the view of that mansion made me really falter for a minute or two.

  My nervousness dissipated soon after I met the family, though. For mega-billionaires, they’re a pretty normal, welcoming, polite bunch, minus Zander Markos of course.

  I haven’t even spoken on the phone with the jerk yet and already I can’t stand him.

  Laurel too was pretty nice to me, I mean she was dressed to the nines, all prim and proper in her Jimmy Choo heels and Fendi power-suit —which I honestly have no idea how she could bear to wear in this sweltering heat— and my frayed capris and Chucks weren’t exactly up to par, but she was friendly and polite as she escorted me into the mansion after making sure that someone would take care of dropping my bags here in my room at the guesthouse.

  The big kahuna, Hector Markos, was waiting for me with his oldest son, daughter-in-law and grandkids in the breakfast room of the ‘family wing’.

  Despite the obvious wealth surrounding them, they seemed to be pretty down-to-earth, straightforward people. I liked them.

  Can’t say I’m well-disposed to like the one I haven’t met yet, though.

  Apparently, he couldn’t be there, which, I’ll be honest kind of pissed me off at first.

  I mean, first he was getting all bent out of shape because I was too busy to pander to him, —the guy wanted me to actually ghost on the freaking Pentagon to be at his beck and call— and then when I finally got here, he couldn’t be bothered?

  But then Violet told me that he had been detained and that he was shuttered in his office, having an important conference meeting with his legal team, something about a pro-bono lawsuit they filed against some horrid company that was polluting all over the place, so I couldn’t stay mad.

  Most of our clients are looking for eco-friendly firework option when they come to us, but I’ve never seen the degree of knowledge this guy has demonstrated in any of them.

  Sure, the questions he kept firing my way via email were a bit much sometimes and totally patronizing in a few occasions, but most of them actually maid good point and I could tell they were the fruit of in-depth r
esearch.

  Of course, he’s still as rude as they come, I don’t need to meet him in person to know as much, yet I can’t help but appreciate his devotion to the protection of the environment, so at least he has that going on for him.

  It may just be enough to keep me from strangling him; then again if I do choose to go ahead and actually choke him, I might need a ladder to get my short, fluffy ass close enough to his neck to get the job done if he is half the giant his brother and father are.

  —*—

  “Chipmunk, don’t tell me you’re really thinkin’ of meeting that stuck-up snob wearing that?”, my older brother asks from the screen of my iPad, one eyebrow raised, his blue eyes a little disbelieving.”

  I shrug and look down at my black tee. “Why? What’s wrong with it? I already met the rest of the Markos family wearing it.”

  Eli grunts and face-palms. “Please, tell me you’re joking, Alexandra.”

  The frame of the video-call shakes a little when Eric takes the tablet from him. “You know she isn’t.”

  I see an enlarged shot of one of his hazel eyes and then he moves the screen away and his whole face comes into focus. He smiles at me.

  Eli takes the tablet back.

  I roll my eyes at him. “It’s just a t-shirt, Eli, chillax.”

  “You really wore that? In public? In front of billionaire clients?” I hear Emmett ask and I laugh.

  “Yeah, sure. Why not? The joke’s offensive only if they’re being rude themselves by doing what the tee’s accusing them of, right?”

  “What the tee’s accusing them of?! You are crazy,” Eli states.

  “And no one croaked at the very sight of it? I’m impressed,” Emerson says, I see his tattooed hand coming into view as he tries to take the tablet from our older brother.

  Eli smacks his hand away. “I’m trying to have a conversation with our loony sister here, bro.”

  I hear the laughter of my other two brothers from the background.

  “We all are: this is a conference call, dude” I hear Emmett say as he snatches the iPad from Eli.

  His face appears into the frame, one finger pushing his dark-rimmed glass over his nose.

  “Sis, please. Don’t joke about this shit, okay? Our other two knuckleheaded brothers can think this is a funny prank and so can you, but Eli and I are the one who actually spoke with this Zander guy, I don’t think he has a sense of humor big enough to laugh at your T-shirt, trust me.”

  Eli takes the tablet away from him. “He is right you know, that guy has a stick so far up his ass, I’m pretty sure you can see it on his tongue when he speaks.”

  I laugh at the colorful description.

  I might not have met this particular Mr. Markos yet, but the emails we exchanged were enough to paint me a pretty dire picture of my ‘boss’.

  He definitely seems to be the difficult one amongst the Markos men.

  As far as I can tell, he is very exacting and detail-oriented, painfully so, but maybe I’m being too sensitive.

  I have to be honest, at least to myself, and admit that my opinion has been colored by his hands-on approach, normally I’m used to clients that let me have much more space and creative leeway when it comes to displays, so I’ve been a bit annoyed at his need to control every part of the project.

  And then that’s the fact that he seems to really have a problem with me being the ‘best’ pyro our company could send. My brothers told me he took issue at my age, but the truth is he’s probably just another misogynist bastard who can’t stand the thought of a woman working in what in his mind is a manly-men-only type of field.

  I don’t take kindly to this type of man —which is a polite way to say I more often than not end up punching their stupid faces.

  After my parents passed away, my older brothers took a single factory in Oakland and worked tirelessly, night and day, until they turned it into a giant on the market, effectively destroying our competition. I was only a little girl back then, but my dad had taught me well, he didn’t think that fireworks and explosives weren’t meant for girls, so he shared his knowledge with me just as much as he did with my brothers. I’ve been working side by side with my siblings since I turned fourteen and I was finally deemed old enough to explore my passion for fireworks if under their careful supervision.

  This is my life and I haven’t looked back on it with regret once.

  I fell in love with pyrotechnics the first time I ignited a firecracker and wanted to know what made it spark.

  I’ve worked too hard to get where I am now to let some man judge me based on my sex —as I suspect— or even just by my age —as he says.

  I look down at myself and I sigh; the front of my tee reads:

  ‘Yes. I do have boobs.

  Bravo: you have eyes.

  Now, look up at my face or f**k off!

  And I mean it in the politest way ever.’

  I’d really better change.

  No sense in poking the bear, I suppose. Not to this extent anyway.

  Normally, I would torture my brothers a little longer, but I guess I’d better cut this short before Eli has a coronary.

  “Alright, maybe it is too much: I’ll change before my new meeting, happy?”

  “You’re only going to trade this for another insolent tee, aren’t you?” Emerson retorts.

  I shrug, smiling at him. “That’s kind of all I brought. I can promise I’ll wear a less disrespectful one, though.”

  I hear Eli’s groan of exasperation from the background. “Oh, God, give me strength…”

  “You don’t need strength, you need a girlfriend, Eli. So you’ll have someone else to focus on and you’ll finally start to mind your business and leave me be.”

  “Ouch,” I hear Emerson say.

  “You too.” I scold, pointing at hi.

  Eric and Emmett laugh.

  “And you, and you. You all need a life, guys.”

  They don’t date much as far as I can tell: all they do is work and worry for me it seems. I can’t remember having met a single girlfriend of theirs in my life.

  I love my four crazy imperious brothers to pieces, they have been my only family since our parents died in a car crash when I was ten.

  Eli in particular is pretty much like a dad to me, but so are the others in a way since they all helped raising me. I’m closer to Emmett, because he is the least tyrannical of the four, but even he can be a worrywart on his best day; come to think of it, it’s a miracle they agreed to send me out here on my own without much fuss.

  I’m trying to make them understand that while I do appreciate their support and care, I’m not a little girl anymore, I’m a twenty-four-year-old woman and I can look after myself now, but they don’t want to let go yet.

  Eli starts on me again. “But seriously, sis. If this guy gets to be too much to handle you know what to do, right?”

  “Oh, trust me, I’m sure he will be. I don’t think he can help it. Three hours in this place and I already can tell you all the people he hired to put the party and the retreat’s activities together are either in awe of him or scared shitless of the guy.”

  Apparently he never smiles and if he thinks you screw up, they say he can make you wish the floor would open up and swallow you with a single scathing look.

  Ain’t that nice?

  “I gathered as much,” Emerson says.

  “I’ll still punch his lights out if he steps a toe out of line with you, baby sis’,” Eric says.

  “Ditto,” my other siblings say almost in sync and I laugh.

  I better calm them down before they show up and really get us all in trouble. The last thing I want is to see three weeks of work and our ten mils payout go down the drain.

  “We have to keep two things in mind, guys. First we can’t be bulls in china shop about this job: You all heard what Violet, the older brother’s wife, had to say when she booked us. This display really means a lot to them
because of their late mom and everything. I mean, they’re mainly doing it for their dad and we’re using the late Mrs. Markos’s notes and referencing the displays she organized so to a certain degree I can understand the man. Emotions must be high… they seem to be a pretty close-knit family, so this has to be painful for him. Controlling assholes are people too.”

  My brothers nod to themselves.

  “What’s the other thing?” Emmett asks.

  I shrug. “Well, the other thing is that the guy is a billionaire and for the kind of money he’s paying us, I guess he can afford to be a bit of a jerk…”

  “Like hell!” Eric mutters and I shake my head.

  “I don’t care how much this job will net us, chipmunk, if this guy is a prick to you about your age or your qualifications you call us. I don’t care if he’s worth fifty times what we have, I’m gonna still get on my chopper and lay his ass out as soon as I touch land.”