Reagan

Sighing, my steps take me closer and faster than I'd like toward the front door of the face brick monstrosity I know as home, “You seem like a nice girl ‘n all Lizzy, but I can't make it today, maybe some other time.”

I’m not completely sure what I expect her to say, but the silence on the other end doesn't seem good. And if I was some common teenager maybe it would've bothered me, but honestly, I couldn't give a dime.

In all truths, the girl is hot and has a great personality but I'm no fool to think she would keep me entertained for long. Unlike the curvy blonde, I'm meeting tonight, who has always kept me on the ladder. You never know what you getting with Dainy, the girl has a surprise waiting at every turn.

Tonight, however, Dainy isn't going to like what I got to say to her and she's certainly not going to agree to anything I'm going to tell her either.

“Okay, fine, maybe some other time.” I sense the disappointment in her tone, but I don't rethink m decision, I know myself.

“Yeah whatever,” I end the call and just like that Lizzy with legs that carry on to Mars is a distant memory.

My steps falter when I enter the house. My dad is in the middle of the foyer standing at least twelve feet high on a step ladder. His fingers working as he changes the globes of the chandelier.

One would think born into money automatically concludes luxury living, hired cleaning services or housemaids at our beck and call, but the truth is, a long line of money equals an even longer line of secrets.

Orniel's have more than is legal, our secrets go way back from the 1700s and we aim to keep them as secrets for as long as we can.

People like us leave the showing off for the stars and preppy people who were born poor and came into 'riches' by luck or hard work. We don't trust easily so housekeepers, butlers and private chefs are the only things we seek out if we have no choice.

Garden service is the one luxury we afford and that too we have hired surveillance watching their every move. Outer appearances and all that shit are important.

In reality, we very rarely get lucky with obtaining a housekeeper who would never sell you out or steal the first piece of jewelry they find.

My dad and I learned the hard way when he married my mother. She swindled him out for ten million dollars. At just five, I first handedly found out the meaning of scam artists.

My mother was one and she didn't care that she had a kid or that she could have turned her life around. No, she only thought of the end prize, green Benjamin's aka 'money' with a bold capital M.

It was what I was to her, a living price tag.My mother - Cary Stanley sold me to my father for ten million dollars and sweetened it with full custody attached to the deal. She was stupid because my family would've paid billions. I never saw her again and frankly it never bothered me growing up.

My dad remarried two years later to a widow named Merrell Smith, my ‘real mom’. The mother to my ten-year old brother Talon and six-year old sister, Lara.

“Dad.”

He ignores me for a few seconds to secure the final bulb, then climbs down the ladder. His gloves are flung on the floor before revealing the blue ‘Orniel eyes’ Merrell is crazed about.

His unshaven beard twitches in his idea of a smile, “How was practice?”

Hitting his back, I pick up his discarded gloves left on the white tiles, and shove it in the back of my jeans. My red t-shirt seems to make friends with the gloves as I trek through the house to get ready for meeting Dainy.

I answer him, “same old, old man,” as I move through the foyer.

“How's that sweet girl of yours.”

Laughing, because my dad asks me the same thing almost every day.

Why the man thinks I'm going to ever answer that question, when we both already know the answer.

I got no girl and even if I did, sweet would not be one of her qualities.

I run up the hard wood stairs, touching the fish tank that runs across the outside walls separating Talons room from mine.

I key in the code for the locks I had installed a few months ago because I found my brother watching porn on my t.v. Once the doors open it’s like I entered another home. My brother got a quarter of the second floor, I however got the rest.

On my sixteenth birthday, Merrell surprised me when she insisted that she was redecorating the second floor. The idea was absurd and it sucked because we used to have a full gaming room and a private cinema on the second floor. My friends and I hung out in there every day.

We didn't have another gaming room but we did have a much bigger cinema room downstairs. It was meant for huge crowds of people but my dad occupied it mostly for work purposes. Apparently, the screen was better than his Apple when he was conducting conference calls to our clients in Germany and London.

A few days later Merrell showed me my new room or should I say small pad that vacated three quarters of the second floor. I was speechless. Unlike most teenagers in Liston Hills, my parents are around weekdays.

Weekends I'm normally alone.

I don't have high school parties often inside my house, as I said earlier, we have secrets.

One of them is my father's weapon room which is behind the stairs on the first floor. I do however have pool parties and bonfires occasionally.

Dainy unsurprisingly is always having something. I know it's her idea too, she likes entertaining.

When we were younger, she’d call like twenty of us over and we’d play darts or some stupid game that would end up with someone crying or angry.

When we got older, she threw parties fit for college.

She’s always known how to have fun.

Dainy Hallow was born for entertaining. I wonder how ‘entertaining’ Dainy is going to feel tonight, when I sneak into her room later.

I shut the door and turn the small knob next to the alarm system for the spot lights mounted into the top corners of the royal blue walls. My place brightens at the same time the automated air freshener switches on.

I drop my bag next to the door as I slip off my Jordan's and place my sock covered feet on the grey and teal stone floors. I do a quick scan of the newest editions to my place making sure my brother wasn't in here.

The black leather couches and forty grand gaming system was something I did myself two weeks ago. I know I placed an alarm system to keep Talon out, but he is an Orniel, we can't help ourselves.

I walk past the multi-colored stone top bar area on my left and straight to the shower room down the hall all the while whistling the school anthem.

It's not until the hot streams pour down my naked back, burning the claw marks Dainy left the night before when I made her a woman, I realize that my good mood is solely because of Dainy.

I’m anxious to see her. One night with her, just one night and look at me. I hope Dainy agrees to what I got to say for both our sakes because there is no way I'm gonna let some douche touch what's mine.