“This is a good development.” Eleni heard Paul Westin tell the brothers. “Judge Padilla doesn’t usually appreciate grasping widows.”
Kami snorted and elbowed Eleni. “Meaning he doesn’t like pushy, greedy women. That’s good.”
Eleni was about to make a comment when Judge Padilla heaved himself up onto his stool behind the bench and then looked up and pointed right at Eleni. “Ms. Ariosa?”
“Yes?”
Of course, it was not just Eleni who answered. Alaina stood up beside Tisha Olivares-King and gave the judge a little wave. “I’m right here, Judge Padilla! Hello! I’m Alaina Ariosa.”
“You need to excuse yourself, madam.” Judge Padilla gave a dismissive wave of his hand that was so imperious it belonged in a cartoon sketch of a judge and not in a real courtroom.
Skye sucked back a gasp and grabbed hold of Eleni’s arm. “Oh my God, did you hear that?”
Oh, Eleni had heard, but she was deathly afraid that she would somehow be asked to leave too. She didn’t want to leave. She wanted to stay right here where she could support Orion. Then something occurred to Eleni. She put both hands over her mouth and hissed as she realized that there was no way her mother had bothered to attend her court hearing the day before.
With all of the drama surrounding Mateo Canjillon, the attempt to have the King brothers arrested for assaulting their mother, and that bullshit trip to the hospital emergency room, Eleni had completely forgotten that her mother had been scheduled to appear in court for the intial hearing surrounding the charge of theft from her ex-boyfriend, Michael.
“Holy. Shit!” Eleni whispered.
“What?” Skye demanded. It was pretty obvious that she lived for this stuff.
But before Eleni could say a word, Judge Padilla whipped that imperious hand of his toward the bailiff and then right back toward Eleni’s mother. “Bailiff, if you wouldn’t mind?”
“Of course, Your Honor.”
The bailiff snapped his fingers. Two more court officials appeared in their uniforms complete with guns and handcuffs. Within seconds they had Alaina Ariosa trussed up like a turkey. She started squirming almost immediately. It was readily apparent that she had no interest in going quietly.
“What are you doing?” Alaina demanded.
“Ma’am, did you happen to forget that you were scheduled for a court appearance yesterday upstairs in the criminal court with Judge Albrecht?”
Dead silence. All of a sudden Eleni saw the mental backpedaling plain on her mother’s face. Oh, this was going to be good. Eleni could tell. Alaina was gearing up for something. Was she honestly going to try and weasel out of this?
“I didn’t receive any notification of that,” Alaina told Judge Padilla. “I didn’t know anything about it!”
“Someone signed for the court documents and the summons. They were delivered to your house.” Judge Padilla did not look amused. “I believe Eleni Ariosa signed for them because you had refused to come to the door for the process server after nearly twenty attempts over a four-week period.”
“Well, my daughter is a smug sort of girl.” Alaina tried to give an airy wave of the hand, but it was a little difficult with the handcuffs in place. “Maybe you should talk to her.”
“Maybe I will.” Judge Padilla gestured to Eleni.
Eleni swallowed back her fear and stood up. “Yes, Your Honor?”
“Did you sign for the documents?”
“Yes, sir. I did.” Eleni’s throat was dry, but she was so very aware of Orion’s gaze on her. Of the entire King family’s gaze on her. Their support was a palpable thing. It gave her confidence. “I gave them directly to my mother and asked her about the charges. I informed her of the date of the hearing and asked if she would like help selling some of her extra, uh, items in the house in order to pay for an attorney to represent her.”
“See?” Alaina shouted. “That horrible girl would not even offer to pay for an attorney to represent her poor mother. She’s engaged to Orion King and she would not even offer to help!”
Judge Padilla looked absolutely nonplussed. “Why on earth is that her responsibility? You are a grown woman, Ms. Ariosa. Gentlemen, take her away. Since it’s Friday, though, she will probably have to wait through the holiday for anyone to make progress on her case until next week.”
“What?” Alaina was now struggling and shrieking like a crazy person. The bailiffs were dragging her from the courtroom even as she was making a spectacle of herself. “Tisha! Tisha, you have to help me! Pay my bail! You have to help me. I helped you. Remember? You promised that you would help me out if I helped you.”
Tisha Olivares-King did not even turn around to look at her friend or bother to lift her gaze from the obvious perusal of her fingernails. She was clearly done with the woman who had been her friend. Whatever her use for Alaina had been, it was now over and done with.
The doors slammed and Eleni heard her mother’s voice fading as the bailiffs no doubt carried her off to the justice wing where the holding cells were located. Eleni felt like she should want to pay her mother a visit and yet she really didn’t. The woman had tried to blame Eleni in front of a judge as though Alaina truly expected the law to saddle Eleni with the penalty for her mother’s crimes. What kind of a parent did that?
What kind of a parent tries to steal their children’s inheritance?
“Now we can begin!” Judge Padilla called out to those remaining in the courtroom. He fiddled with the papers on his bench as though he were looking for something. “Oh, yes. That’s right. I believe the proposal for a division of property submitted by Mr. Westin was viewed by both sides before it was submitted to me?”
“I viewed it.” The insolent drawl coming from Mr. Buddig’s lips was so blatantly disrespectful of the judge that for a moment Skye nearly looked like she was going to launch out of her seat with excitement. “I cannot possibly imagine why the court would think that it’s fair given the circumstances. My client was married to Mr. King for nearly four decades. She is therefore entitled to the entire contents of the estate and all of the assets. There is no division. The will was erroneous and illegal and it was created without my client being consulted. Mr. King was her husband.”
“Yes,” Judge Padilla said drily. “I think you can stop emphasizing that point.” Padilla swept his hand out to indicate the King brothers. “There are sons here to prove that Mrs. King did her duty to her husband as outlined by her prenuptial agreement.”
There was a moment’s pause in the courtroom. Eleni’s heartbeat quickened. This was the thing they had been counting on. Mr. Buddig looked a bit uncomfortable all of a sudden. He cleared his throat and shuffled through his papers.
“What does the prenup have to do with the will?” Mr. Buddig wanted to know. “Your Honor, the prenup is for divorce purposes. Not natural or accidental death.”
“Except that the prenup and the will seem to follow a very specific pattern,” Judge Padilla said with an unexpected amount of force. He put both hands flat on the bench and looked right at Tisha Olivares-King as he spoke. “Mr. King obviously intended to leave his business, his estate, his money, and his assets in total to his sons. All six of them, mind you. And then he intended his sons to care for their mother, which they obviously intend to do since they have been most generous with the assets and the allowance and support that they have offered to Mrs. King. The offer is official. It is on court record. And I’m not going to waste a single second more of the state’s time talking about this. The offer stands. It is final. End of story.”
“Your Honor, we will appeal!” Mr. Buddig shouted. “You can’t just say end of story! That money belongs to Mrs. King and not her husband’s bastard child.”
“Oh, there it is,” Gemini muttered.
“Actually the will specifies sons. It doesn’t say a word about who their mother might be,” Padilla pointed out. There was a certain amount of glee in his voice when he said this. Eleni got the feeling that the judge was actually enjo
ying himself. “So I feel inclined to believe that since Mr. King acknowledged Gemini King as his son, that he absolutely intended that his eldest child be included in the inheritance. The other sons have no issue with this. Correct?”
“No, Your Honor! We do not.” Orion offered those words on behalf of his full brothers. “I believe there is even a legal document from our brother, Edward King, who is currently out of the country. He feels the division of property and support provided is fair and equitable and in line with our father’s wishes.”
“Then it’s done!” Padilla slammed that gavel down as hard as he could. Then he pointed at Mr. Buddig. “And so help me, if I hear you trying to appeal I will make every single case you attempt to take a living hell. Do you get me, sir?”
“Yes, Your Honor, I get you.” Mr. Buddig looked faintly green. There was nothing like being told that you were going to lose every case you attempted to litigate. Apparently not even Tisha Olivares-King was that scary.
“You can’t be serious.” Tisha was white faced and no longer examining her fingernails as though she were bored. “You can’t be serious. You can’t mean it. How am I supposed to live?”
“Gee. I don’t know.” Judge Padilla sounded sarcastic as hell. “Perhaps you can return to the million-dollar University Park mansion that you own and discuss it with the staff that your sons have made sure to provide for.”
Eleni and the other girls covered their mouths and giggled as they watched Tisha Olivares-King struggle to keep quiet. Then Eleni had a private moment of happiness as she realized that this meant Orion would be moving into her cozy little house in Addison for good. Some people might not want that. Eleni wasn’t one of those people. She could not wait to get married and set up a life together that would stand the test of time.
Chapter Thirty-One
Orion ducked just in time to avoid getting hit in the face with a huge vase. The hefty knick-knack shattered against the wall. Pieces exploded away from the flocked wallpaper and flew through the air. Unfortunately, Orion could not duck all of these as well and several good-sized chunks of porcelain pelted the skin of his cheek and neck.
“You bastard!” Tisha shrieked the words at him as though she were determined to make his head explode with the force of her anger. “How could you? How? How could you sit there in court and let that judge take everything away from me? You promised! You. Promised!”
“I promised you what?” Orion tried to be calm. He shook his head and rubbed at the tiny wounds to dislodge the flecks of porcelain dotting his skin. The wounds almost immediately began to heal. “I never promised that I would hand over the reins of our company and let you sell it off to the Dunlops to finance your endless shopping spree. That would be extremely foolish on my part, don’t you think?”
“No!” Tisha got right in his face and glared until Orion could not help but wonder if she was about to come at him with another, sharper, and more potent weapon. “The foolish thing is supporting those loser brothers of yours. And Gemini? Gemini? He’s not even a King!”
“Actually, he is a King.” This was where Orion always felt that his mother completely missed the point. “He’s not an Olivares. You are. We aren’t Olivares either. My brothers and I are Kings.” He pointed to his cheek and his neck. He could feel that there was nothing left but a few little marks of blood where the wounds had closed and healed over almost instantly. “He will always be a King just like we are. You just called me bastard. You know that I’m not. There is a surefire way to know that someone is a King, Mother. You just don’t like it.”
“You’re all a bunch of animals.” Tisha snarled and spun away from Orion.
He watched her stalk off into the kitchen and wondered what the purpose was of staying here and letting her verbally abuse him like this. Was there really any point to it? Was there really anything to be gained from letting her spit her venom at him?
No.
And yet Orion felt as though he were doing his duty as her son. She was his mother. He could not change that fact. He had felt sorry for her so many times over the years, but nothing was going to change the fact that any pity or remorse Orion had experienced had been burned up in the fires of hatred that seemed to burn in Tisha’s heart.
“Why?” Orion called after her. “Why do you hate all of us so much, Mother? Why did you murder our father? Was it really so hard to stay faithful to a man who gave you absolutely everything you asked for and more?”
Tisha was busy in the kitchen. Orion could not get a grasp on what she was doing even though he could hear every footstep and smell the scent of the big gas stove whooshing to life. She was muttering to herself. Words about how Mackenzie King was not a man. Horrible epithets about Orion and his brothers that suggested they had ruined her body and her figure and that she had never wanted them in the first place.
“I didn’t want children!” Tisha shouted the words at the top of her lungs. “There! I said it! I never wanted children!”
Orion began walking toward the kitchen. He felt a strange sense of something in the air. The pressure was changing in the house. It was odd. The whole thing felt off. The air was heavy and hard with the smell of gas. Had the pilot light gone out on the stove?
There was a scraping noise. Perhaps Tisha was trying to relight the pilot on the stove in order to make herself some tea or something. Who knew what was going through the woman’s head. At least Lupita wasn’t here to suffer through this latest tantrum. There was debris all over the house. Everything breakable was on the floor in pieces. The china was shattered. The glasses were a mess that crunched beneath Orion’s boots on the wood floor. Even the Christmas tree had been overturned and thrown around like trash. Ornaments lay in piles everywhere with their pieces broken off or their glass portions caved in like the carnage on a domestic battlefield.
“If you never wanted children, why would you sign a prenuptial agreement and marry a man who was adamant that you were going to give him at least five?” Orion had always wondered about this. It wasn’t like Tisha could say that she had been surprised by the request to have sons. “Kings always have sons!” Orion reminded his mother. “Lots of them. If my grandmother hadn’t died giving birth to Dad there would have been a ton of uncles around when we were growing up. That’s how wolf packs work! You knew that!”
Orion got close to the kitchen. His nose twitched. There was a lot more natural gas in the room than what he’d first suspected. What was going on? Surely his mother could use the freaking stove. Right?
“Mother?”
Stepping inside the kitchen door, Orion froze as he realized that Tisha was now standing beside the stove. It had been pulled away from the wall and the natural gas filling the kitchen was not coming from the burners.
“Mother, what are you doing?” The reek of gas was making Orion nauseous. He could feel his body’s natural defenses taking over to make sure that he wasn’t going to pass out or die from exposure. “Turn off the gas, Mother. You don’t want to hurt yourself. You can’t possibly. You are your favorite person, remember?”
“Are you sure?” Tisha’s tear-streaked face glared balefully at Orion as though he had just stripped her of everything important. “Or is it more important for me to know that you’re going to live knowing that this is all your fault.”
“All my fault?” Orion was aghast. “What are you talking about? I made sure that we provided for you. This house is yours! Paid off free and clear and totally yours to do what you want with. You have everything! How can you think that we left you with nothing? You have as much as you ever had when Dad was alive!”
“I wanted it all.” She whispered the words as she lifted a long handled lighter into the air. She let it hover near the stove.
“Mother, no.” Orion swallowed. This was going to hurt like hell. He didn’t know. Maybe it would kill him. He could not say. It wasn’t like he had any basis for comparison. He was a King. But even Mac King had been murdered. “Mother, don’t do this. Don’t kill yourself. Don’t
be like this!”
“This will teach you a lesson.” Tisha Olivares-King made her final announcement right before Orion heard the click of a lighter.
Orion spun around just as he saw the orange flame of the lighter frame his mother’s still pretty face. Her elegant cheekbones were backlit suddenly by the ignition of the natural gas that had utterly consumed the space around her inside the kitchen. For just a second Orion saw her blonde hair fly up around her head before it was consumed by fire.
The heat on his back was like an incinerator. The concussion of flame meeting gas pushed him so hard that Orion felt his boots leave the wood floor even as the soles were melted into puddles of rubber on his feet. The sense of disorientation increased as his body flew through the living room toward the windows.
Glass erupted in front of him and Orion lifted his arms to keep the shards away from his face. It was like standing outside his own body. The world was shadow and flame as he sailed through the enormous picture windows flanking the double French doors leading from the living room to the deck out back.
The high-pitched sound of shattered hearing filled Orion’s head. He heard nothing else. He saw splinters of wood flying past him into the yard. A plant seemed to explode beside him, coating his body in gooey organic shrapnel before following it up with potting soil that coated his arms and face.
Then he hit the hard composite wood surface of the deck and flung his arms reflexively over his head. Flaming bits and pieces of the house hit his back and singed holes in his clothes. He felt his hair blown forward over his head. The scent of burning hair and debris filled his nostrils. The beast inside his mind rattled its cage and roared with the need to survive.
Billion Dollar Wolves: Boxset Bks 1-5 Page 118