Read Online 4 The Billionaire's Seduction All That He Requires by Olivia Thorne - Free Book Online

you’re thinking. My parents usually left us with a nanny and took off for the black diamond runs. By the time I got good enough to go with them, I was a teenager, and there was no way I was going to hang out with them then.”
    “But… you spent time with them after skiing, right?”
    “No, they usually went out dining and drinking with friends. I’d see them in the mornings before we left for the ski lifts, and that was about it.”
    “What about on Christmas?”
    “Eh… I guess I saw them a little longer on Christmas morning, but then it was off to the slopes.”
    I sat there openmouthed. I knew that situations like this existed – where parents did little more than make guest appearances in the movies of their children’s lives – but I’d never actually met anybody like that.
    I had tons of friends whose parents had divorced, and a couple of them had rarely seen their fathers growing up. But that was different; they usually lived in different states. I’d never met anybody who had grown up like Connor, with married parents they never saw.
    I tried again.
    “But… what about as a kid?”
    “What about it?”
    “Didn’t you ever… I don’t know… play games?”
    Connor thought for a second. “My father and I played Monopoly a few times.”
    Finally.
    “That’s nice,” I smiled.
    “He would make deals with me and then renege.”
    “…he’d what?”
    “I sold him Park Place once to get money to buy hotels for another property, but with the promise that I could land on Park Place or Boardwalk twice and not have to pay. He agreed, then when I landed on Boardwalk the first time, he demanded payment. I told him he’d promised, and he asked if I had it in writing.
    “‘But I trusted you,’ I said.
    “He said, ‘Only a fool trusts another man’s word without anything to back it up.’
    “I started to cry. I told him that if I paid him, I’d go bankrupt.
    “‘Why should I care?’ he said. ‘That’s your problem, not mine. You should have thought about that before you sold the property to me.’”
    My mouth dropped open even farther. Besides parents outright abusing their children, and redneck dads leaving three-year-olds inside cars while they went inside strip clubs – which I had only ever read about in newspapers – this was the most insane thing I’d ever heard. “What?”
    “Oh, it gets better. The next time we played, I sold him a property and made him sign a contract, and he still screwed me over. When I pointed to the contract, he asked, ‘And who’s going to enforce it?’ So I ended up going bankrupt again.”
    I shook my head in disbelief. “That’s… that’s absolutely unbelievable…”
    Connor smiled grimly. “My father never loses. In Monopoly or in real life.”
    “Why did you keep playing with him?”
    He shrugged. “I didn’t know any better. I just thought that was how the game was played. Plus, I was only eight years old. I guess I wanted him to play with me no matter what – to pay me some sort of attention – so I just kept on coming back for more.”
    “He did that to an eight-year-old?” I asked in horror.
    “Well… maybe I was nine. It’s hard to remember.”
    Connor kept on eating like nothing was wrong – and then he looked up and realized I had an expression on my face like I’d just heard about somebody killing puppies. He smiled consolingly. “It’s not that big a deal.”
    “ Not that big a deal?! Connor, your dad’s a psychopath!”
    “I think you mean a ‘sociopath.’ And… yeah… probably. He definitely has sociopathic tendencies, that’s for sure. Love of power for power’s sake, and lording it over other people. Total lack of empathy for others. But… no matter how horrible all this sounds, I learned some of the most valuable business lessons of my life from those games with my father.”
    “Like what?!”
    “Like never trust another person’s word. Always be able to back up your agreements by some form of