Chapter 6 - The Unseen Benefactor
What Grant Mercer, in all his arrogant brilliance, did not know was that Julian Cross, the esteemed CEO of Mercer Dynamics, was my older brother.
Our family history was complicated. After our father passed away when we were very young, our mother eventually remarried. I had decided to keep her maiden name, Bennett, as a tribute to her side of the family, while Julian proudly kept our father’s surname, Cross. Because of the different last names and our ten-year age gap, very few people knew we were closely related.
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Grant had certainly never met him. When we were dating, Grant had asked about my family, and I mentioned I had a brother who lived overseas building his business. As Grant’s control deepened, he spent years calling my family "useless dead weight" and expressly forbade me from visiting them or inviting them to our wedding.
Grant never bothered to ask the important questions. He never asked who had paid my expensive university tuition in full. He never questioned where the massive down payment for our luxury suburban house had actually come from. And most importantly, he never wondered why a prestigious firm like Mercer Dynamics had suddenly reached out to recruit him shortly after we returned from our honeymoon. Julian had quietly done all three of those favors for me, watching over his little sister from the shadows.
