Free Ridge Creek Reunited (Ridge Creek Duology) by C L Green Page B

and then kidnapped my girlfriend. Just because he’s explained his reasoning for this to you does not make it right. If he hadn’t have fancied himself as a Goddamned James Bond 007 he would have known you were fine exactly where you were and things would have gone very differently.”
    He’s so right.
    Why am I even trying to defend this man? A man who until this morning I didn’t even know existed. I don’t even know him. I’ve lived my whole life accepting that I didn’t have a father and now, pop, one appears out of nowhere like a Fairy God… father.
    Which I suppose, is why I ’m feeling this way. Somewhere in the deep dark recesses of my mind I’ve always wanted a father. I even remember when I was young fantasizing and dreaming about him. He was supposed to be my knight in shining armor and he would come and save me from my evil fire-breathing dragon mother. Sadly from the story he told me today, if he’d have known where I was, this may actually have happened.
    That’s if he’s telling the truth.
    But why wouldn’t he be? And who else but a father would go to such an effort to find me? I can’t help think that at least some of his story is true. Or maybe I just want it to be.
    He managed to answer every single question without blinking Arianna.
    I can only trust that he was sincere. And truthfully, I’d only spent a couple of hours with the man this morning, but those hours had flown. They’d flown because Stephen Bradford was likable. He was a good conversationalist, he was a good listener and he genuinely seemed to care about me. Me, the daughter he hasn’t seen since I was two years old.
    Two years old.
    “Aagh,” I groan as I rerun his story in my head, again. Having just told it to my friends no wonder they’re dubious. It seems like a tall tale indeed.
    Stephen Bradford is seemingly a wealthy man. A very wealthy man. Born into money, he ’s the son of Australian metal mining magnate Richard Bradford and current Chief Executive Officer of his father’s company.
    Stephen Bradford also has an older sister, Elizabeth Bradford. According to Stephen, Elizabeth Bradford is not a nice person. Unhappy being a female born to a father who is a strict advocate for patrilineal inheritance, she despises her lack of placement at the head of her father’s company. She believes that as the oldest child, she should be in the position of power.
    Carrying a huge fire in her belly to fight against her father’s traditional patrilineal ways, Elizabeth Bradford is a bitter and twisted person. Devoting her life to proving herself a better candidate to take over the leadership of her father’s company, she’s been fighting hard to discredit and remove Stephen at every turn. As an intelligent, wealthy woman in her own right, she’s also a woman with the time and the resources to cause both her brother and father considerable grief. And this grief has been going on for decades.
    Examples of Elizabeth’s style of grief (never proven of course) had been near miss car accidents for both Stephen and his father (unusual mechanical failures) and unusual mining explosions when one or both of the Bradford men were on-site at a mine. There have also been two separate incidences of fraudulent dealings exposed within the company. Both of these incidents, if undiscovered could have led to stockholder takeovers that would have removed both Stephen and Richard from their positions of power. They would also have placed Elizabeth in one.
    These incidents if Stephen is to be believed, are taken by both he and his father like water off a ducks back. Seemingly the two Bradford men have learned to accept they have an evil sister and daughter who is Hell bent on killing them and they have learned to treat it as a game. A sick game, but a game nonetheless. A game where security tactics are employed to prevent her attacks and spoil her offensive maneuvers. A game where the entire family (including Elizabeth) sits down together at