The Badboy's Secret

XXV Good Company (Part 1)

Hey Guys! Sorry, this is so so so late! I haven't had a very good week and so I'm really not quite done with the next chapter which if you haven't guessed, will be quite significant. So I have split it into two with this one being part 1. It's short and crappy and just a bit of history but I promise it's relevant to the next chapter. Anyway, hopefully it's okay.

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My father didn't grow up rich or even wealthy. He was raised as a normal middle-class boy with a father who worked as a brick-layer and a mother who was a retired nurse. He was an only child and he often got lonely. He didn't grow up in Sydney. He grew up far west of Australia in Perth. He didn't have many friends because he went to a prestigious school where you were only popular if you could play football. His father wanted him to get a better education so the family spent all of their wealth on sending him to the school. He wasn't bullied, but everyone knew his father wasn't a doctor or a lawyer so they stayed away. However, he was happy and his parents were happy. Until my father was 14 years old and everything changed. The family was driving on an ordinary trip to the supermarket. His father had allowed him to sit in the front seat instead of his mother because he wanted to start learning to drive even though that was two years away. His mother agreed that sitting in the passenger seat would allow him to see how his father drove. So they set off. It was fine, my father watching my father drive intently and his mother staring out of the window in the back seat. It was fine, until a drunk driver fell asleep at the wheel and came crashing almost head on into the car. My grandfather had tried his absolute best to swerve, to do anything but the car was going too fast. My father tells me he doesn't remember the crash. He only remembers waking up in the hospital with nothing but bruising. He remembers being told that his mother had passed away upon impact. She had hit her head on the seat in front and knocked her brains about causing severe internal bleeding. He was told that his father was alive but had broken bones and was in severe shock. He passed out just as the thought crossed his mind that "if she was in the front she would have survived".

After the accident, his father was depressed. He would not speak or do anything but lie on the couch. Often my father came home to see his own father with tears streaming down his face. He couldn't work because of his injuries and he wouldn't move from the couch because everything he saw reminded him of her. He loved her. She was the love of his life. My father didn't know what to do. The money was running out for school fees and the house. After a few weeks his father started getting off of the couch and my father was glad. Except he didn't get up to go to work or comfort his son. He got up to beat him and yell at him. Like my father blamed himself that his mother died, his father also blamed him. He yelled abuse and smacked my father until bruises formed on his cheeks and he had to pretend to his teachers that he had started learning taekwondo. I suppose that's why our father was so good to us. Because his own was not good to him. My father was a man of action. He wouldn't sit around and wait for the money to run out and child services to come. He was 15 now. He was old enough to take care of himself. So he took action. He called up a private school in Sydney where he knew his mother's sister lived. He asked if he would be able to sit for a scholarship from his own school in Perth. They said yes. So he sat the scholarship and he got it. He was a smart boy. Grades were never a problem for him. He rang up his aunt and told her what was going on. She was a travelling woman in her 20's. He said he was going to move over to her apartment. He promised he'd pay rent when he got a job. She agreed saying she needed someone to look after her cats anyway. So my father gathered up some money, bought a plane ticket, packed his stuff in an old rucksack and left his father forever. He never knew what happened to his father after he left. But my father knew he was broken and that he would be forever. When my father arrived in Sydney, he moved into his aunt's apartment as promised. He used what little money he had left to buy a new school uniform and some nice clothes and went hunting for a job. He finally got one at the local supermarket, packing the shelves at night and was able to pay his aunt an ample rent. He also bought his own food for discount when there were broken cans or rotting vegetables and could make himself dinner. He worked hard at school. He wanted to get out of there and into the real world where he could get a real job. He barely made friends. When it was time to choose his career it was between doctor and lawyer. He would have chosen doctor, if not for a job he came across as an office assistant at a company. He applied for it, thinking he would never get it but to his surprise the CEO of that company liked that he was young and had plenty of years ahead of him. So the day after graduation, he sold his uniform and used the little money he had to buy a business suit and work at the company. For his job, he simply had to do all the work the CEO could not do. The CEO was luckily, a very jolly old man that looked at the bright side of everything. He had started his business from the ground and stayed with it the whole time. It was a company that made office supplies. My father worked there for 10 years, making a lot of money in the meantime. He was still renting out his aunt's place and so barely spent any of it. By the end of his job there and several steep pay rises for being a model employee, my dad was a millionaire. The time then came for a new CEO to take over the company. The current one had fallen ill to liver problems and was counting on my father to take over. So of course, he did. But only for a little while. My father had loved it there and he loved being CEO but it wasn't his company and he wasn't passionate for it. He wanted something that was his own. A reflection of years of hard work. So while he was CEO, he decided with all the money he had saved to build up a sister-company from his own pocket. The boardroom even agreed it could be a good idea. So he started a laptop company. Laptops were only just coming out and my dad saw the niche in the market and took it as soon as he could. He hired all new staff, contacting manufacturers and spent years and years building up the company. He called it "Envisage". By the age of 35, he was the CEO of two multi-millionaire companies. But the stress was way too much. He wanted a life as well. He wanted kids and a wife and a CEO of two companies can't have that and a normal life so he looked to find a new CEO of the office supply company as he moved to the laptop company. A couple, who had been his managers and board room officials offered to take over the role. My father agreed and made them co-CEOs of the company. He was finally free to go and do some of the things he should've been doing in his twenties. He went out at night when he didn't have much work and he bought a gorgeous penthouse for he had been sleeping at the company building all this time. But he happened to be walking down the street one night after work when he met my mother. She was a gorgeous lady, dressed smartly and smiling sweetly. My father used to describe the way he met her as that he thought she was a fallen angel. And it's true, my mother is very beautiful. Somehow, he spoke up and a few months later they were seriously dating and she had moved into his apartment. She was an upper-class Melbourne girl who had decided to go against her parent's wishes and move to Sydney to do fashion design. She didn't want to be a designer, she just thought it would be fun. They were a perfect match. My fun-loving mother and serious father. He employed her at the company much to her parent's relief and married soon after. And then she fell pregnant with twins. My father was overjoyed to be a father. They were in Tokyo when the twins were born. Seth and Logan, two gorgeous boys. Not long after, my mother fell pregnant again and back in Sydney, I was born. We lived happily, just the five of us for many years. Then my mother fell pregnant again and little Joey was lastly born. My father was overjoyed to have so many children. He had felt so alone as a child and he was glad we had siblings to share our lives with. My father was a brilliant one, to say the least. He would spend as much time as possible with us, nurturing us to be strong human beings. But then things got tough at the company. I was just a teenager. My father started coming home so late that we'd have to eat dinner and go to bed without him. He grew purple bags under his eyes and his hair started going white. My mother was very worried. She'd retired from the company after I was born to look after the children and at this stage she wanted to get her job back in hope of alleviating the massive workload put on his father. There was a lot of competition in the business. The sister-business, the office supply company, was also failing. My father was trying to break away from them.

Then, he died. Just like that, everything changed. I was too busy being a teenager and partying at clubs to even notice. I was the last to know because I was stupidly making out with my boyfriend in some filthy club. I'll never go clubbing again. But instead of staying in the mess, my mother made the decision to leave. So we left. And we never looked back. My father's legacy died with him. Until now.

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CHAPTER XXV Part 2 RELEASE:

Sat 3 December 6:30pm CDT (central daylight time USA)

Australia: Sun 4 December 10:00am ACDT (Australian Central Daylight Time)

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