Chapter 1
I tried covering my ears with my fingers, but my sisters' voices still leaked into my room.
Lucia sighed a drawn out exhale. I could hear it so clearly, as if my elder sister was next to me and not in the living room conversing with our younger sister.
"I don't know what's wrong with him," Lucia was saying. I could hear the frown in her voice, all silky smooth and rich. She was always hanging around people with extreme wealth and so she slowly morphed her tone to better suit her environment. "Do you think we should do something about it?"
"What could we even do?" My younger sister, Ava, replied. "He doesn't listen to us and he's locked himself in his room doing god knows what."
"Should we tell him?" My eldest sister sounded unsure.
"Nah," Ava replied.
I almost shouted back to inform them I could hear every word they were saying, but I held my tongue.
What was the point? They wouldn't care if I could hear them or not. They never listened to me. Hell, they listened to no one, not even Mom and Dad.
Our parents gave us way too much freedom, and I bet they regretted it. All three of us ended up at the extreme ends of the social spectrum.
I was on one end, with barely any friends and no social life. A loner.
A loser.
My sisters ended up on the other extreme, having way too many acquaintances. Sleep deprivation became a habit for them because of the amount of parties both women were invited to.
Lucia, the oldest out of the three of us, ended up finishing college two years late. She was never home, and as a result, her grades reflected her negligence. It didn't matter, though. Because of her high-powered connections, her grades were glazed over during job interviews, and she ended up with a sweet gig as a personal assistant to a CEO of a future Fortune 500.
All because she slept with the married man.
And judging by how late her office hours ran, and the 'special' gifts that were regularly sent to our condo all addressed to Lucia, with a cologne scented handwritten note attached to each of them, the affair was still strong.
I didn't know what happened to Ava. Once we had almost been inseparable. We had our own separate rooms back in the old place, but we would always share the bed, the toys, the sweets. Hell, we even bathed together.
That all came to an abrupt end when our parents set a barrier between us when I was five and she was four. No more sleeping together, and definitely no more shared baths.
The rift started then, but we grew even further apart as we got into high school, where Ava was showered with attention from the boys, almost in the exact way Lucia had. It still hurts me to this day. I missed my sister. She was now a shadow of her former sweet self. I didn't mind not being close to our eldest sister. She was six years my senior and so we shared little common interest.
But for Ava... she stopped confiding in me by the time she turned fifteen.
It was at its worst in college, where she drew the fancy of Kevin, the hot-headed quarterback and captain of the football team.
They became the power couple of the school. Rules didn't apply to my little sister, and teachers would give her grades slack.
I worry about her. She was going down the same path as our eldest sister. Parties and drugs were already being introduced to Ava, and sooner or later, she would become as detached from reality as Lucia was.
If she wasn't already.
I was in the final year of college and just turned nineteen. My sister was a grade below me.
There was a sort of hierarchy structure in school. The bottom of the pyramid contained the largest population and had multiple sub structures. I hung out with people scraping at the very bottom, the one choked full with nerds, geeks, and guys who had never touched a football in their lives.
Losers.
We all shared the same traits: frail, no sense of fashion, no fancy cars, and a shared interest in computers and books.
My friends would get bullied constantly. For them, it was a daily greeting of slanders, verbal abuses, and physical threats.
But I was in a weird position in the hierarchy. It felt like I was in my very own pyramid, away from the rest. I hung out with the losers, and everyone else saw me as a nerd. None of the people slightly above me, the ones who occasionally get party invites and occasionally played sports, wanted to hang out with me and no girls wanted to talk to me. Like my friends, I was fodder, but unlike them, the people at the top of the food chain left me alone.
I was free of bruises, black eyes, and my wallet stayed intact inside my pockets. Lucia had left a reputation in the college, and Ava was currently holding hers as queen. No one dared to pick on me, as pathetic as I looked.
My friends told me I should be grateful.
Should I be grateful, though?
I was living in the shadows of my sisters, and believe me, they weren't nice shadows to be huddled in. I knew once I was out in the real world, receiving constant 'Get Out of Jail Free Cards' would soon fizzle out.
"Should we knock?" The rich voice of my elder sister floated into my room, breaking me out of my daze.
"Nah," Ava replied dismissively, her tone bored. "I doubt he would answer."
I sighed, taking my fingers out of my ears and resumed what I was doing, hammering the pestle against the mortar harder than ever.
"What's that sound?" Lucia asked. I could hear the frown in her voice.
"Just ignore it," Ava said. "You know Aaron. He's weird as hell."
"But what the hell is he doing, though?" Another feminine voice piped up. A voice that made my skin heat up and goosebumps to appear all over my arms.
Shit.
I abandoned what I was doing and shot to my feet, walking towards the door and slowly turning the knob.
I was just planning to crack open the door an inch to take a peep outside without anyone noticing. But my little sister must have been watching the door because she let out one of her long sighs before speaking up.
"Oh, brother," she muttered. "Here he comes."
Fuck. Since the little brat had already noticed me, I swung the door open and stepped outside.
My eyes quickly found their way towards my crush.
Great. Vanessa is here, and my little sister is shit talking me. Just my day.
"Hey, Aaron," Vanessa said. It wasn't a warm greeting like I had wished, as if a girl was talking to her crush. Her words came out monotonous and forced.
I couldn't look into her eyes or the outfit she wore that showed more skin than it covered. The cheerleader uniform that the school had come out with had received numerous complaints, but so far, no efforts have been made to modify it.
I had a suspicion the school kept the skimpy uniform because it made the football team more popular. And my suspicions were strengthened after multiple girls got rejected after they tried out for the cheerleading team. Only the hot ones got in. The seats in the audience were always filled so people could watch the halftime show.
And, of course, not only had Ava got accepted into the cheerleading squad. She got invited to be the captain.
"Hey," I replied, trying to look anywhere else but at the two girls in their skimpy cheerleader uniforms. That was when I realized there was one woman missing.
"Where's Lucia?" I asked my younger sister.
Ava flipped her pink hair and turned around. "Airport."
"Air--what?"
I really didn't want to freak out, especially with Vanessa there, but I couldn't help it. Why was our eldest sister going to the airport?
Ava went to the kitchen island and grabbed an apple from the fruit basket.
"Ava..." I said. "Can you please tell me why Lucia is going to the airport?"
She shrugged.
Ugh. My sister had become such a bitch.
She took a bite of the apple and motioned to her best friend that she was ready to go.
"Cya," Vanessa called out to me as she followed my sister out the front door.
"B-bye," I said, raising my hand quickly and waving at her.
I dug my face into my hands after the front door closed. I could be such a klutz in front of my crush.
Sighing, I dug my phone out of my pocket and shot a text to Lucia.
Me: Why are you going to the airport?
I was about to put my phone back when it vibrated. My older sister had sent an image of the interior of what looked to be a private plane. They were plush sofas everywhere, and the aisle looked like it was made from golden marble.
Although the interior was large for a plane, it was mostly empty. There were only a few suits scattered on the different sofas, busy with their phones or laptops. I zoomed into the photo to see if I could spot Mr Leo, her boss. I saw him on the front cover of last month's Time magazine, so his features were still fresh in my mind. He wasn't in the photo.