The CEO's Kryptonite ⚣ ✓

41

Lol y'all sick of me yet? First and foremost, thank you to everyone that has read and continued to read this book. I'm dying at the amount of people who actually give a shit about this story. Y'all are amazing, thank you.
Like I said, there isn't a comment that's been missed so please continue to give your hilarious input on your most favorite, and least favorite parts. I appreciate every last one of you. Xoxo. On to the story now... (TW: SA)

Alex

The search pulled up just 4 results. Two of the files were ones I had already skimmed through earlier. The third file looked like it contained some scanned images, the only issue was that you could barely make out what they were. When transposed through the scanner, the images came up as black blobs in the files.

I flipped through the next page, searching for anything clear and in English. On this page, I recognized one of the documents as a birth certificate. It was dated back in 1989. The name read Bradford Ivanov. I leant back in my chair as I felt my thoughts start to take over.

I glanced over at Brad.

There was no way, right?

I glanced between Brad and Christian. Brad was still sitting across from me, carrying on a conversation with Joan. Christian was too busy playing with the glass paperweight I had on my desk, that he hadn't noticed my staring. When I flipped to the last page of the file, there was a second scanned birth certificate. This one was dated the same date as the first, except the signature on the certificate was different. So was the name.

It read Bradford Stevenson.

"Hey Brad?" I called out, pulling my eyes away from the screen to catch his. He stopped the conversation he was having with Joan to glance over at me.

"You find something?" He asked.

"Sort of. I was just wondering... what's your last name? I don't think I've heard you say it before."

Brad's eyebrows furrowed in confusion. "Stevenson... why?"

I glanced back at the digital files again.

Was Brad really an Ivanov? Did that make him and Christian, brothers? Why would he change his name? Why was he now the families lawyer? What the hell? My hands aggressively ran through my hair.

Christian looked over at me, intrigued. When his eyes caught sight of what I was looking at, his whole body stilled. "Brad..." he whispered. Brad was up in an instant. He walked around to take a look at the laptop with Joan followed close behind.

"Who's Bradford Ivanov?" I asked, switching back and forth between the two birth certificates.

"That would... be me." Brad whispered out So quietly, I barely heard him. my eyes darted back and forth between Christian and him.

"You two are..." I trailed off. Christian finished the sentence for me.

"Brothers. We are brothers."

Joan was the next person to chime in. "What the actual fuck. You two... are brothers? You're also an Ivanov?" That last part was directed at Brad. He responded by gently massaging the bridge of his nose.

"It's an incredibly complicated situation. One I don't believe we have the time to explain right now."

"Poppycock." I snapped back at Brad. "My schedule just cleared up."

Both him and Christian shuffled away from the laptop to take a seat in the same positions they were sitting in earlier. Joan sat besides Brad, and Christian sat on the edge of the desk. He took a deep breath. "Brad and I don't have the same fathers." Christian explained. "My mother's past is far more complicated than she has lead you, and much of everyone else, to believe.

"This was many years ago, about a year and a half before she met my father. She had ran away from home at an awfully young age because of the abuse that took place in that household. When she managed to leave her home, she was already seven month pregnant with Brad. She told no one of who had gotten her pregnant, and immediately fled her home in Russia, to a small city in Ukraine. The baby was born just months later, but for the protection of the child, my mum decided to change his last name. She gave him up to an orphanage in Ukraine, and found a way to make it to the States. That was where she found my father, who was a young entrepreneurial businessman himself.

"They fell in love. My father obsessed over my mother, and every last detail about her. She was perfect in his eyes, so perfect he folded on taking her last name instead of his own. I was born very shortly after they met. They gave birth to me during one of their trips back to Russia for business. By this time, they had already started on plans for Ivanov Corp. This was why my father adapted so quickly to the news, when my mother told him of the boy she had left behind in Ukraine. My father'a home country was Ukraine, and he used his own connections within his family to find that boy. By now, Brad would have spent maybe close to four years in an orphanage.

"The Orphanage my mother had left Brad at, had burnt to the ground. They ended up splitting and relocating the children to nearby orphanages. It took my father a bit to track Brad down, but when he did, they started the arrangements to bring Brad back to the States with them. For his safety, my mother still found it best to keep the child at arms length. She kept his last name as Stevenson, and he lived in a different household with hired staff, but behind closed doors, my mother allowed both him and I to play as children. As brothers, rather.

"My mother told me fairly early on who Brad was, but she stressed the importance of keeping that information a secret. She told us we could never tell anyone who he really was, and that here in the States, he was nothing more than a friend." Christian finished.

The room fell completely silent for what felt like eons. The first person to break that silence was myself. "Holy shit." I whispered.

"Holy shit." Joan replied, as she too looked stunned into silence. "T-That's- Thats- Holy shit."

"Yeah." Brad sighed. "As we grew older, it became less suspicious. Christian and I didn't look too similar in appearance, and when I went on to Law School, Christian took over Ivanov Corp. Now we're... here."

"Did your mum ever tell you who your father was?" Joan all but whispered that question.

Brad hesitated. "I was the product of repeated sexual assault by the hands of my uncle. My mother's brother."

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