Page 61 of Hide And Seek

“Yeah, that’s exactly it. When you’re kids, it feels like you’ll be friends forever. But eventually it’s not the same as it used tobe,” he replied, eyes still on the ax instead of me. “People change. Or they don’t.” A quiet exhale left him. Then he raised a brow, lips quirking into a half-smile. “A lot of the Legacies still act like they’re fifteen. And I’m sure Jasmine’s never missed a chance to tell you how lazy some of them are.”

I laughed softly. “To be fair, she’s not totally wrong.”

“That’s true. I have to kick Jensen’s ass to get him out of bed most mornings,” he said. He shrugged lightly. “I guess most of those guys were just raised differently.”

I blinked. “I thought you said you were basically raised together?”

“Grew up together. But we still had different parents, obviously,” he said, lifting a brow. “Different family dynamics. And I was always a bit of an outlier.”

“How so?” I asked, frowning slightly.

“My family is the only one in the group that’s considered ‘new money’. The others all come from generational wealth. Piles of money dating back literal centuries.” Rhys hesitated, rubbing his jaw. “People like that tend to be insulated from reality.”

“Or totally detached from it, in some cases,” I said, arching a brow.

He chuckled. “Yeah. Most of the other Legacies were taught that they can work if they want to, but only as much as they feel like. And that attitude bleeds over to their work here.”

“But you’re not like that.” I tilted my head slightly. “You actually work hard. Even Jasmine thinks so, and you know how she feels about Legacies.”

He laughed again. “Yeah, she never misses an opportunity to let us know.”

“So what made you so different, then?” I asked. “If you all grew up around the same people, same schools, same everything… why didn’t that rub off on you?”

Rhys stilled for a moment, like the question had landed somewhere a little deeper than he expected. Then his gaze dropped back to the ax in his hands. “My grandfather,” he said. “He’s the one who made our money.”

I leaned back against the workbench, listening. “What did he do?”

“Construction, originally,” he said. “Then property development. Small stuff at first. Then bigger. Then bigger again. Until he got into telecommunications at exactly the right moment, just before everything exploded. That eventually turned into Northgate.” His mouth curved faintly, but there wasn’t much humor in it. “By the time I came along, the money was already there. But the mindset…” He shook his head slightly. “That never changed.”

“How so?”

“My grandfather didn’t believe in wasting anything. Time, money, opportunity. If you wanted something, you worked for it. Didn’t matter how much was sitting in the bank. You still had to show up. Still had to put in the hours.”

I watched him for a moment. “Sounds pretty intense.”

“Yeah, well, he grew up really poor. So he started with nothing and built everything himself,” he said. “But he always believed that he had two things going for him. Hard work and good luck. He said he met tons of people over the years who were just as smart as him, just as capable, and had just as many good ideas. But they were never in the right place at the right time. Never in the right room. So they never made it.”

“Luck definitely plays a part,” I said, nodding slowly. “I think a lot of people don’t like to admit that. Especially rich ones.”

Rhys snorted. “No shit. They love to say it’sallhard work,” he said. “Anyway, my grandfather wasn’t like that. He credited his good fortune just as much as his work ethic, and he wanted to raise his family with the same understanding. So my father,aunts, and uncles were all taught how lucky they were to be born into wealth, and they were also taught that they had to hold up the other end of it.”

“By working hard?”

“Yeah. Not just coasting along and doing whatever they felt like, whenever they felt like it. Real work. Lots of hours. Like most other people in the world.”

“So then your parents passed that on to you?”

Rhys nodded. “Yeah. There were… rules.” His mouth twitched faintly. “If I wanted something, I had to earn it properly. No shortcuts.”

“Ah.”

“For example, if I wanted to go to a certain college, I had to get the grades for it and apply like anyone else. No legacy admissions, no calls made behind the scenes,” he went on, turning the ax in his hands. “And when I was fourteen, I had to get a weekend job. Entry-level, minimum wage. No dropping my last name to get hired, either. I had to walk in, apply, and figure it all out myself.”

I blinked. “Really?”

“Yeah.” Another small shrug. “And once I got it, I wasn’t allowed to quit. Didn’t matter if it sucked. I had to stick it out.”

“Oh.” My brows lifted despite myself. “Wow.”