Chapter 1: Our Family's History

Julia

I looked around if anyone had witnessed my frustrated sigh, but the coffee-break talk between Trish and Marlene, that I had involuntarily overheard, had made it abundantly clear that nobody had any interest in socializing with me right now. That's why I was alone in my office. I rubbed my face with the palms of my hands, wondering what in god's name these people were expecting from a twenty-two-year-old orphan in control of a multi-national company. Did they expect me to be happy, even though we lost our parents just four years ago, celebrating this inane "Nude Day" malarkey with them? Well, apparently they did, according to Trish and Marlene.

As ever in the case of 'Julia getting her knickers in a twist' as my little brother Jason would say, I called him, asking if he had time to talk. At this very moment he was preparing his plane to fly back from Toronto to Burbank, having inspected a Canadian aircraft he wants to buy for his little airline project, but he said he'd be home by the evening and invited me to have dinner with him. Even though I need to use them more often than I like, I hate aircraft, because the only thing I associate with these infernal machines is death and grief. Our parents died four years ago when their private jet crashed on approach to Burbank airport.

It was a manufacturing flaw that had made all three engines on Dad's plane flame out, and the manufacturer paid twenty-five million dollars in damages. I'm sure some people think it is a fair price for the life of two loved ones, but first of all, their death left us with more than ten times as much money to begin with and no money in the world would change the fact that Jason and I are now the only survivors of the O'Connell clan. I'm sure we could find a few utterly remote cousins a dozen times removed back in Ireland or Blighty, but the fact was, the continuation of the O'Connell blood-line did now hinge on Janson's and my ability to evade the almost ridiculous bad luck of our family long enough to have or adopt kids should we ever find a partner. We were both single.

Our grand-parents, the first O'Connells to emigrate to America had both died in the late eighties of last century, neither of them even close to retirement age. Grandpa Mick lost the short fight with a vicious case of Leukaemia and his death seemed to have robbed Grandma of any will to live. Three months after his death mom found grandma dead in her bed. In the night her broken heart had simply stopped beating. The most obvious part of their legacy is that even in the third generation, we still have a distinct British accent, despite being born in the US of A. Some American slang mixed in over the years, but we are still mistaken for British ex-pats occasionally.

Long before his cruel death Grandpa Mick had started "O'Connell Business Consulting Inc.", an IT and Business company, founded at a time when computers were still weighing tons. It laid the foundation of our wealth and after his death our father took over Grandpa's business and expanded it into a multi-national company, employing twelve-thousand people in Pasadena, Washington, London and Hanover in Germany. And when that plane-crash killed my parents, I suddenly found myself in charge of it, just eighteen and a half years old, and a freshman at Berkeley. I majored in business administration, as I was always slated to take over from dad, but at the time that should have been ten years in the future. Instead I was then also thrust into the role of ersatz-mum for my then fifteen-year-old brother.

During the time I was attending College, I simply appointed an external expert to lead the company as an authorized representative, but after graduation I took over myself, just twenty-one years old. And in between I also had to nurse Jason back onto his feet. He'd been devastated by our parents' death even more than I. Well, at least in this regard being a rich kid paid off. Every second day I would take a ninety minutes' helicopter flight home, and the next morning back to Berkeley in order to be with my baby brother. My college time cost several million as a result, but money is not the issue for us. The rest of the time he was looked after by our housekeeper Hanna, a Hungarian immigrant who is a graduated art teacher, but had had no luck finding such a job after coming to the States. Thankfully she loved her current job with us, even if it was nominally 'below' a teacher's standards, and she was absolutely doting on Jason.

Hanna, in a way, is the bane and boon of my life. As an art teacher she was a perfect match as a nanny for my little brother, as he's a wannabe Picasso himself, but she never was much of an authoritarian person, deciding instead that Jason would heal better if he had a really good friend, even if she was ten years his senior. Whenever a 'no' needed to be handed out as an answer, that job fell to me. The three and a half years until Jason turned eighteen, fifteen months ago, were an endless game of 'good cop, bad cop'. Guess which one I was. Thankfully that didn't cause any friction between Jason and I. In fact, for all his teenage silliness, I think there's a very smart brain residing between his ears and he knows and accepts that I was only doing what had to be done.

Quite recently I found out that my dear brother and Hanna are really good friends. I've been living in my own house since Jason is old enough to live on his own. The reason for that is simple. Both Hanna and Jason share a particular penchant of our late mother – they have no understanding of the concept of clothing. I think our mother never wore clothes except when she left the house and even then only when she left it through the front door. You could say our estate is California's largest nudist resort and I hate being naked or being around naked people, especially if one of them is my brother. It was fun until I was fourteen, but then puberty hit with full force and nothing creeps you out more than seeing your ten-year old brother ogle his sister skinny-dipping in the pool.

Mind you, Jason isn't a creep. I wasn't really angry with him, because I'm intelligent enough to know that this is what happens with boys when they see a well-shaped body. I'm self-confident enough to admit that I look very good, even if nobody ever gets to see my body in anything but full clothing. He and Hanna also wear full clothing whenever I'm visiting and in return I make sure I never drop by unannounced. We know that we have widely different opinions on the matter, but Jason and I accept our differences and respect each other's life-style.

Actually, it's not entirely true. I did drop by unannounced, once, about two months ago. My phone battery had died and I couldn't call in beforehand. When the doorbell wasn't answered I gathered that Hanna and Jason might be out shopping and used my code to enter, and god almighty, I walked straight into a scene I wouldn't have expected ever, even though perhaps I should have. Jason and Hanna were lying on a large blanket on the lawn behind the house and he was shagging the daylights out of Hanna's bum. By the sound of it, both loved it, considering that the noises they'd made wouldn't have been out of place on a farm. No wonder they hadn't heard the doorbell or even noticed that I was standing right there on the terrace, shocked out of my mind. And I realized something else – Bloody Nora, was my little brother not little. How Hanna had inserted Jason's large rod into her bottom without suffering catastrophic internal bleeding eluded my imagination.

I've never driven over the speed limit, but that day, having run back out Jason's home, I left a contrail. Had any cop crossed my path on the way back home, I would have ended up in a penal colony for the rest of my life. I ran into my house, frantically reaching for the first Vibrator with batteries in it and pounded the raw stuffing out of my pussy for an hour straight until I had climaxed four times and my brain had turned to goo.

At least after the experience I was stupefied long enough to almost forget about the fact that I had just wildly masturbated over the image of my little brother shagging the housemaid.

I had been living like a nun for four years, but that had had different reasons. Everyone thinks I'm a prude, but in reality I've done things that would make Jason and Hanna look tame. The problem is, I don't remember when, where and with whom, because I was sodding drunk every time.

A few days later I had worked up the gumption to take Hanna aside for a talk about her intentions towards my brother. In hindsight I must admit that I had subconsciously hoped they might have fallen in love with each other, because both Jason and I do not have much luck dating. Hanna was very contrite about having been inattentive enough to prevent me from walking into it, but I assured her that it was my fault for not having called in beforehand. I actually assured her that I was not angry about what had happened as long as it was consensual.

Hanna admitted that she'd been having sex regularly with Jason since his eighteenth birthday. She'd fancied him since he was sixteen, and Jason would have been more than willing to indulge her, but her green card was too precious to her to endanger it by having sex with a minor. But the moment he turned old enough, well, apparently my little brother had a very entertaining eighteenth birthday. I got the impression that Hanna's feelings might run a bit deeper than just 'fancying' him, but she told me – swearing me to secrecy – that she thought Jason was secretly in love with someone, but apparently she had never tried to probe for more details. She called it her female intuition.

I would definitely need to keep an eye on that. For people as wealthy as us, it was easy to get caught up with people who loved our money much more than us. It's no coincidence that the only sex I had had for the last four years had been with various vibrators.

But for now I had my own conundrum to sort out.

Jason

Aw, the joys of watching the Shores Of Americay from thirty-two thousand feet above...

That day when I turned eighteen had opened the flood gates big time in more than one regard. I wasn't even out of bed yet when Hanna started to introduce me to the fact that there is more to sex than putting part A into slot B, waking me up with a very gentle blow-job. Let's just say the day went on quite interestingly and I was a changed man by the time I fell into bed that night with my nuggets emptied properly and repeatedly. I've never been that exhausted in my life.

But I also started getting my driving license and my pilot license and I'm happy to report that I am now a commercially rated pilot, as of two weeks ago. As I flew back from Toronto I used the view below to take my mind off worrying about Julia's call. She had sounded really upset. I knew she hated aeroplanes, but she'd assured me that my first solo-flight in command of a Cessna Citation was not the reason for her upset. I hadn't been much better than her after the plane crash that claimed our parents' lives. But I was reasoning that even with our family's almost legendary bad luck the chances that two generations of O'Connells would be wiped out by air disasters were too low, so the best way to ensure I would make it past thirty years of age, would be flying.

It started when I was sixteen. In his will dad had bequeathed his beloved De Havilland Beaver and his Cessna Caravan to me. Even though I still needed Julia's consent as she had custody of me, and it was hard to get considering the accident, I registered an airline with the FAA and the two planes started doing cargo flights for DHL and FedEx. I couldn't help but think that dad had bequeathed the planes on me for a reason. Julia was always headed towards a managerial career and Dad's favourite candidate to take over from him one day, but most likely he wanted to instil some business sense into me as well. I certainly had none at the time, being an idealistic artist.

I certainly caught the bug. After being taken on a sight-seeing flight with a local company, I was hooked and ran off to get my PPL and then the instrument rating, everything I could get without having to be eighteen already. I'm not one for large-scale thousands-of-employees' economics like Julia can juggle every day, but something like ten or twelve planes one day is something I'm shooting for.

Everybody was questioning my sanity when the first large plane I bought to join the Caravan and the Beaver was a Russian three-engined Tupolev TU-154M, a plane that seats 158 people in a two-class layout. It guzzles more fuel than an alcoholic during a piss-up in a brewery, but it was one of the last examples built in 2007. It was practically new and designed to be able to operate from barely developed strips in Siberia. There is nothing better suited to fly into Alaskan airports in winter. No western plane provides more bang for the buck and my little company won a ridiculously lucrative charter contract from a well-known oil company to fly workers from all over America to various places in Alaska. Even specialists like Bering Air shake their heads in disbelief about some of the places we can safely fly into with 158 people in the back of a plane the size of a Boeing 737. Too bad I still had to wait until I was 21 to become an ATP rated pilot.

That day, when Julia called, I was on my way back from Toronto where I had signed a memorandum of understanding to buy two relatively new 737-800s from WestJet. I wanted to send one of them to Fairbanks in Alaska for scheduled flights to Magadan, Markovo and Anadyr in Russia – all places well developed enough to warrant using something more refined than the Russian plane and the second one was meant for charters to the Caribbean out of Burbank. The Citation I was currently sitting in was a recent addition and would be permanently chartered by Julia's company, so she and her upper management would have something proper to travel in when it was necessary to visit their other offices. I actually looked forward to being her pilot for some of the trips to Washington, London or Hanover. I felt like we barely spent any time with each other any more.

You see, I love my sister, as much as a brother is allowed to love his sister. Well frankly, I love her much more than that, but you can't admit that without people thinking you are a creep. Without her I would probably never have gotten over the death of our parents. It must have taken a lot for her to overcome the inherent weirdness of allowing her fifteen-year-old brother to sleep in her bed in those first few weeks, just holding me in her arms as we often cried ourselves to sleep together.

Air Traffic Control contacted me with instructions to start my descent and in about an hour I'd be back on terra firma. I fired off a message to Hanna asking her to be properly clothed and prepare for Julia's visit when I returned home. There'd be no 'welcome shag' upon my return. But if my big sister was in trouble, having fun with Hanna was the last thing on my mind anyway.

Julia

When I arrived at our family estate, now Jason's property, I could see he was home already. There is only one Ferrari 612 Scaglietti in town with 'O'Connell Airlines' painted on its sides. It's a good thing we live in America where all acts of tastelessness are considered normal. In Europe they would have drawn and quartered him for the sheer blasphemy of desecrating a Ferrari like that. But that's just my little brother. He doesn't care much about the opinion of other people.

But I cared about his opinion, especially now. With my employees secretly disenchanted about something as silly as the demise of the 'Nude Day' that dad had apparently celebrated every year, I needed the opinion of someone for whom going naked was the rule rather than the exception. That's a description that fits my brother quite accurately.

Since I had announced my visit properly beforehand, Hanna was decently clothed and met me with a smile. Like Jason she was simply accepting of the fact that I did not share their propensity for nudism and casual sex. It was a matter of mutual respect. I did not comment on their choices and they never tried to talk me into joining their liberal ways. Sometimes I wish more people would be like that. My office crew was obviously not quite as understanding of my decision not to celebrate that silly Nude Day.

The dinner was excellent, as always. Even though Hanna had quite an appetite for my brother's body, she was first and foremost a maid, and a very good one at that. The house was always in perfect condition and her cooking was making me envious. I'm sure she could have found a job as a teacher by now, but the fact that she was still around after six years meant that she obviously liked working for Jason. The generous pay and my brother's willingness, well eagerness really, to indulge her certainly played a part in that decision too.

Jason told her that she could call it a day after she had cleaned the dishes and served us wine. With a grateful kiss on his cheek she left.

"What happened, sis? It takes quite a bit to unsettle you like that."

Jason was sipping his wine and he patiently waited for me to come up with a response. He was the only person I could openly talk to.

"Did you know that Dad celebrated a 'Nude Day' every year in his office?"