Second Chances: a Coincidences novel

Prologue

I tried my best to cover the nasty bruise I had on my arm from where my brother punched me, as the last thing I wanted was for anyone to be asking why I had a new bruise almost every day.

Ever since I returned to Los Angeles, life has not been easy. Financially, I was okay since I still had the money my dad had left me, as well as my trust fund, which my mom was never able to access thanks to a clause my dad had added so that only I would have access to it.

Of course, my mom begged me to unleash it so she could use it on my brother, who was still doing drugs and drinking alcohol and causing mayhem everywhere. Last night, I barely managed to get a good night of sleep because all I could hear was my mom and brother arguing, bickering, and yelling at one another.

This was quite typical, especially because my brother would smoke cigarettes indoors and neither my mom nor I could handle the smell. It was bad.

It was quite literally the only thing we could count on.

And the only good thing was that my brother never attempted to harm my mom even in his drunken and loaded state. But instead, he beat me bloody, and while I was even better trained in martial arts and kickboxing – which was quite proficient in – I still received injuries.

The bad thing about my brother, especially when under the influence of his drugs, was that he tended to hit harder and with the intent of hurting physically. Like always, he treated me like his punching bag and my mom was never willing to defend me. She still held it against me that I had pressed charges against him before going to Lebanon and continually begged me to not call the police. Only, there were times I had called and released anywhere from twenty-four to forty-eight hours.

So yeah, my life was not ideal and while I lived rather peacefully in Lebanon, I still had problems that had arisen as a result of the feud that existed between Louai and me. Even Taline had emailed me repeatedly since I never told her, but I never responded because it was over between us and I still had not gotten over how she in a way participated in the public humiliation I had endured.

Though more indirectly.

Something else that was new was that thanks to my mom having had no access to my trust fund money, I had managed to use part of the other money my dad had left me to buy an Autoshop I could call my own. I was the sole owner of a business and I was only nineteen and had done it without my mom's or anyone else's help.

I was making bank, I could move and live alone if I felt like it, but I stayed behind because now that I was back I did not want to leave my in-denial mom alone with my violent brother, who refused to get help and insisted there was nothing wrong with him and even denied he would beat me bloody.

My mom never supported my decision of buying the auto shop because to her it was beneath her that her 'loser' son chose to become an auto technician and mechanic.

She always told me how disappointed she was in me and yet I was the good son, the studious one, the one who wanted to get ahead in life but had reached a semi-dead-end because of the fact I had lost my scholarship. Sure, I could pay for my university studies now that I had a trust fund that could quite literally last me a lifetime, even if I paid for an entire four years. Only, at this point, I was so jaded that having to go to school while living in a violent household, was nothing short of a nightmare.

I would be so stressed and sleep-deprived that I would likely fail my classes.

Something more was that I missed my uncle Ragheb and Aunt Jihan, and my cousins Khaled and Louai.

I had kept in touch with them for the last six months since coming back but have not responded to their emails in nearly six months. The truth was that I had nothing good to say and I was so tempted to tell them how bad things were but could not tell them at all because I knew they would instantly hop on a plane, come here to sort through the chaos, and thus would anger my mom and more problems would arise.

Plus, my mom loved reminding me that I was not at their level and that I never would be, especially not someone who worked in cars.

She was never this cold with me but since I had my brother arrested when he tried to kill me, she changed and always did for my brother what she would never do for me. She even told him that if he stopped his drug abuse that she would give him money, pay for his school, and even buy him a car – all things she refused to do for me.

It was why I always worked for what I wanted and did not rely on anyone for any type of financial support.

I had my money at my disposal and despite how much my mom wanted me to give it to her so she could spend it on my brother, and often gave him hundreds if not thousands of dollars that he claimed he would use to buy necessities such as clothes, toiletries, shoes, etc. But he never spent any of that money on any of those items. He used it for his drugs, and alcohol, partied, and oftentimes left my mom penniless and was left paying the majority of the bills since my brother tended to drain her paycheck.

I had a feeling she was giving him way more than she let on because she was an attorney and made a lot of money, so there was no real reason why she would be broke at all. Then again, she has also spent who knows how many thousands of dollars in rehab facilities he would run away from after a week or two of treatment.

Hence, another reason why I stayed behind was to keep the bills afloat. The only good thing was that the house was fully paid for since my dad had inherited it from his parents and now we were the owners. However, the house was under my name because my dad had willed it that way but my mom kept that from me.

But now that I was aware of my ownership of the house, I decided to keep my mom in as much of a short leash as possible.

She could not do anything without my permission and she knew it. It would not surprise me if she sold the house so she could give the money to my useless brother.

I also found a hidden letter from my dad that his lawyer had given to me, where he stated that he disclosed why he had left that secondary account for me. He knew my mom would waste the money on my brother and leave me without anything and the house because he did not want to risk her selling it so it could end up in someone else's hands when this house had been in our family for a few generations.

So a lot was answered and now I knew why my dad had added that clause so that no one but me, could have access to that money.