Joachim Books

Howdy! Welcome to Tuesday Tales. This week we have another snippet from "Renovating the Billionaire." This one is about Jackson Brody, our hero. Scroll down to return to the great stories on Tuesday Tales. 

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Jackson Brody, billionaire inventor and designer, grew restless. He pushed up from his posh leather chair and went to the window.

“Damn it, Charles, I told Aunt Mary to sell that monstrosity years ago!”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now she’s gone and the damn thing is mine. I don’t want it. And, from the pictures the real estate agent sent, its falling down, full of holes and reeks of animal pee.”

“Not exactly in the Brody image is it?”

“You can say that again. I want it demolished. Taken down. And thrown in the garbage.”

“You can’t exactly throw a thirty-room house in the trash, sir.”

Brody turned to face his right-hand man. “I can and I will.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Charles said, making a hasty exit.

Jack Brody had spent his summers in that house. Dumped there by parents who made no bones about his birth being a mistake, he’d been taken in by a woman he thought was his spinster aunt. Jack had played there in the woods with the local children, getting filthy, hunting for frogs, and listening to the hoot of a nearby owl at bedtime.

The house had held happy memories, until Mary’s death. Her siblings had cornered Jack, demanding he pay for her burial and set them up in style. He remembered the conversation. 

“Mary took you in. She didn’t have to. You’re no blood relative. Somebody had to look after you,” her brother James had said.

“She was my aunt. I presumed my father’s sister,” Jack replied.

James shook his head. “Nope. She’d been your father’s mistress, until she got too old. Then he ditched her and found a younger playmate.”

Horrified by the truth, Jack rejected her relatives. He’d come to despise the house where he had had so many happy memories as a child. When she died, Mary left the house to Jack. Now it had to go, and with it his family's shame. Then he’d wash his hands of this sordid business forever.

TUESDAY TALES

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