by Ashley Gee
The insecurity that wraps around her is as obvious as the over-the-top gown she hasn’t taken off yet. Another one of my talents, seeing the things that people desperately try to hide.
Or maybe I’m being a little too uncharitable.
Giselle waves away her broken promise like a fly she can bat out of the air. “I’ll make it up to her tomorrow.”
Yeah, no.
“I don’t give a shit what you do.” I push past her, but her hands come up to grip my arm, nails digging in just a touch too hard. “Get off me.”
She lets me pull my arm away, likely because she doesn’t want to ruin her manicure. “Your father wants to talk to you.”
Duke Cortland isn’t much for sleep, either, but unlike me he usually tries to get something constructive done in the wee hours of the night. The old man has always been focused almost exclusively on his work.
This town isn’t going to run itself, after all.
But years of chronic insomnia are starting to show in the sagging lines of his face, the growing paunch around his middle and how much slower he moves compared with even just a few years ago.
My own bad habits haven’t caught up with me. At least, not yet.
Duke is sitting at the desk in his study when I shove open the French doors. The room smells faintly of cigar smoke, but there isn’t one in his hand when I step inside. He won’t bring out the good stuff when Giselle is around, because she complains that his Cubans smell like dog fart. A decanter of brandy is on the table next to a full glass.
“What?” I drop into the armchair across from him without waiting to be invited. “I need to get to bed.”
“Don’t take that tone with me, boy. And lying in bed smoking a joint isn’t the same thing as sleeping.”
“Vaping, not smoking,” I correct him, voice laconic as I lean back in the chair. “Gets the job done faster.”
Duke just shakes his head as he shuffles the papers on his desk. “One of these days, something is going to come along to wipe that smirk off your face, and you’re never going to see it coming.”
“Doubt it.” The relationship I have with my father is complicated, to say the least. For most of my childhood, there has been one form of benign neglect or another. I think he planned for Giselle to raise me after my mother died, but that’s what happens when you don’t know who you’re marrying. “What did you need?”
“Something that you have to see.” He pushes the sheaf of papers across the table, knowing my eyes will be drawn to the highlighted portion on the photocopied pages.
“What is this?”
“A copy of the prenuptial agreement I had with your mother. I’ve been trying to get my hands on the originals, but it’s under lock and key at the only law firm in town I can’t buy off.”
“Wait a minute.” I spread the pages across the table, trying to make sense of the legalese. “This makes it look like she brought the lion’s share of the assets into your marriage. That doesn’t make any sense.”
“It does.” Duke looks more tired than I’ve ever seen him. “This is something I’ll deny if you ever breathe a word of it, but the Cortlands have been hemorrhaging money for years. Everything but the house was mortgaged to the hilt. Your grandfather made more than a few bad deals in his time, unfortunately. When your mother and I agreed to marry, her family’s fortune saved us from bankruptcy. But the money came with conditions.”
My real mother was born an Abbot, well-respected in Deception, but not one of the founding families. Like most of the social climbers in town, adding our last name to their family tree was worth a lot of money. Millions, in this case. Everyone knew Grandpa Abbot took a heavy hand in matching my parents together. I’d like to think it was a gentle touch for my mother’s sake, but I had no idea this prenuptial agreement existed until now, so who the hell knows.
My mother’s father died years ago, not so long after his own daughter, so there won’t be any asking him about it now.
“This has been a fun history lesson and all, but I don’t see the point of discussing it.” I lean back from the desk and move to stand. “Goodnight.”
“I refuse to believe that I was ever this stupid at your age.” Duke jabs his finger into the stack of papers, sending a few pages flying off the desk. “Look at what I’m trying to show you before you destroy the rest of your life.”
Tamping down on my mounting annoyance, I bend over the papers again, skimming the different paragraphs and codicils for whatever it is my father won’t just spit out. “The majority of our money came from Mom’s family and reverts back to the Abbot’s in the case of divorce or separation, which isn’t really an issue considering you can’t divorce a dead woman. Something, something, inheritance will pass on to any naturally born children of the union, but only in the event that the firstborn…”
I cut myself off, convinced I’m not reading it right. The papers are out of order, and I flip through them, thinking I must have missed something. The last bit I read out loud, not because I’m stupid, but because whatever words are processing through my mind can’t possibly be correct.
“The firstborn of this union will marry a descendent of the Hewitt, McKinley, Bianchi, Spenser, Tackett, Avery, or Milbourne bloodlines, heretofore known as the Founding Families or all money and property aforementioned in this agreement shall revert to Abbott family holdings without lease or lien. What the actual fuck does this mean?”
Duke looks at me with an expression that almost seems sympathetic. “It means that I can’t pass any of our money onto you, because it doesn’t actually belong to me. Old man Abbott played hardball, and I was too desperate to fight him on any of this. If we don’t fulfill the contract, almost everything we have goes back to your mother’s family. Unless you marry the descendent of a Founding family, you’ll be penniless. Bristol Abbott was obsessed about the power of these last names, and he held the purse strings like a noose.”
I note he doesn’t say anything about being so in love with my mother that the money didn’t matter, not that I’m surprised.
My father doesn’t even sound like he blames Grandpa Abbott for being obsessed with status. Probably because no matter how much money you make, it never quite makes as much of a difference as having the right name does, especially in Deception. He wanted the one thing you can’t buy.
I could respect someone else thinking that signing this prenup was a reasonable thing to do, but it’s my life being screwed with now.
“This is bullshit.”
“You missed the part that says you have to get married before your nineteenth birthday, and your wife has to conceive a child to carry on the family name within a year.”
If it was possible to raise a man from the dead just to kill him all over again, in that moment I would happily do just that to my own grandfather.
“I’m not playing this game with you or anyone else. Nobody is going to make me get married before I’m ready, especially from beyond the grave.”
My father sighed, the exhaustion clear in the set of his slumped shoulders. “Then we lose everything but the manor. And it takes six figures a year just to cover the property taxes on this place.”
“There has to be a way to fight this.” I slam my hands down on the table, ignoring the sharp sting in my palms. My voice sounds strained even to me. I wonder if this is what the bargaining stage of grief feels like. “Bring the lawyers in and let them handle it.”
“I’ve already tried that and more. Your Abbott cousins are eager to see the money revert, for obvious reasons. They would give me a small stipend for the remainder of my life, but it won’t be near like anything we’re used to. Eventually, we would lose the house, and there certainly won’t be enough for your college tuition.”
“What about all the businesses and the land? Cortland Construction is booked out with jobs for the next six months.”
“We’re leveraged past the point of no return. My father, and his too, borrowed against everything more than a few times over. You
don’t want to know some of the people we owe money.”
“Fortunes are lost and made every day,” I argue, deciding his admission is something to deal with later. The desperation makes me crazed. “The construction company is doing well. We can focus on building up the business. We don’t need dirty Abbott cash.”
“You don’t have any idea the kind of numbers we’re talking about here.” His voice is bleak, but accepting. It makes me wonder just how long he agonized before finally working up the nerve to tell me the truth. The vindictive part of me hopes that the guilt eats at him like acid in his gut. “There won’t be enough money for private school tuition or tutors, so Emma will have to transfer to that Godforsaken high school full of every degenerate punk in town next year. We’ll need to lay off all the staff. And that’s just what has to happen immediately, while we prepare the house for sale. If we can act quickly enough to avoid a foreclosure, some of the equity might be salvaged.”
He pauses for dramatic effect to let all of that sink in.
My father is desperate, no disputing that. But for the first time, I realize that I’m being manipulated. As much as I’d like to see the look on Giselle’s face when she finds herself in the poorhouse, everyone who has ever met me knows I would rather chew broken glass than let Emma suffer so much as a hangnail.
I’ve seen the terrible things that go on at Deception High. Hell, a lot of it was instigated by me. I know what kinds of things people do when they’re desperate for a better way of life.
Emma will get chewed up and spit right back out.
My father watches me with sad eyes, heavy with the weight of a terrible world. “There is only one real way to salvage this situation.”
“Why would you sign this?”
“The codicil for your marriage only takes effect in the event of your mother’s passing, if she died while any of her children were still young,” Duke’s voice breaks. With a shaking hand, he reaches for the brandy decanter and pours out a full glass. He drains the glass and pours another before speaking again. “I never thought she would die, not so soon. Not before me.”
Pressure builds in my chest, a mix of anger and disquiet that momentarily robs me of the ability to breathe. A different sort of person might call it a panic attack, but I don’t want to acknowledge the anxiety of a suddenly uncertain future.
Only the rage.
And a powerlessness so profound it makes me want to destroy everything in sight.
Power is the only thing that matters in a place like Deception. Money is the most important form of power there is. The Cortlands might have the right name, but without the money to back it up, any power we have left will dry up like an empty well.
A founding family without cash might as well be Gulch trash.
That is when the worst part of this all finally sinks in.
“There is only one founding family with a daughter old enough to get married.” The Averys have a one-year-old daughter that Emma is always asking when she’ll be old enough to babysit. There isn’t enough money in the world to make literally robbing a cradle an option. “That only leaves…”
I trail off, because I don’t know what my body’s reaction will be if I continue.
Duke says her name softly like he fears what will happen when he says it out loud. It still feels like a bomb goes off inside my head.
“Zaya Milbourne.”
The girl I love to hate, the one I’ve been torturing for years, is all that stands between my family and financial ruin.
My arm burns from the still healing cut, the one I’ll keep hidden under the sleeve of my shirt until the scab falls off.
There are moments when you can say to yourself, Someday I’ll look back and realize this is the moment that defined my life.
Then there are other moments, when you don’t need the benefit of hindsight to know that fate is gleefully tearing your whole world apart.
“Well, fuck.”
Ten
Fate is a sadistic bitch.
Or maybe this is karma finally giving me exactly what I deserve.
Either way, I’m not dealing with this shit lying down. I’d be lying if I said that Zaya Milbourne hadn’t spent a considerable amount of time on my mind over the last few years, but not because I secretly hoped we’d get married someday.
Most days, I just want to wring her neck.
Or fuck her until we both cease to exist.
Depends on the day.
Yes, I sometimes find myself staring at her skin and trying to figure out why it looks so smooth. Or I study the bent curls in her hair, wondering how it’s possible that every strand seems to follow a different pattern. She has always reminded me of those old school magic puzzles where you have to stare straight at them for several minutes before a picture finally emerges.
That’s only because there isn’t anyone else in Deception quite like her. She might as well be the only exotic animal at the local zoo.
None of that makes her a candidate for the next Mrs. Cortland.
The idea of getting married before I’m old enough to legally buy liquor is about as appealing as pulling off all my toenails and then dipping my feet in rubbing alcohol. And not having a choice about when or who is enough to send me completely over the edge.
This isn’t fucking fair.
This isn’t right.
And I really want to somehow blame this all on her, even though I know that’s crazy.
But if I didn’t find her so infuriatingly fascinating, if she didn’t always manage to crawl under my skin and then claw her way back out again, the universe wouldn’t have chosen her to punish me.
She has to take some of the blame.
I stride into the county courthouse like I own the building, displaying way more confidence than I actually feel like I always do. That is what it means to be a Cortland. If the mask slips for even a moment, everything falls apart.
On the outside, I maintain the facade. No one has ever cared what might be happening on the inside.
The overweight security guard operating the metal detector waves me through without even looking up from the screen in front of him. The state of California likes to hire five people for every one job, but his apparent inattentiveness isn’t really my problem. It isn’t as if I’m sneaking a bomb or a gun in here.
Although I might wish I were, depending on how this next conversation goes.
I mount the wooden staircase and take the steps two at a time, ignoring the loud slap of my shoes echoing off the high ceiling. Courthouses are in the same category as cathedrals or libraries. Silence reigns as an unspoken rule that most people innately follow without bothering to question. Even the lawyers who walk these halls every day communicate in hushed voices and respectful whispers, as if the wrath of God will strike them down if they raise their tone above the barely audible.
Personally, I couldn’t give less of a shit.
A purse-lipped secretary glares at me as I stride past the entrance to the circuit court and toward the offices of the district attorney at the far end of the hall. Usually, I’d try to be a little less obnoxious, but I’m not in the mood for anyone’s crap but my own at this point. I wink at her as I pass, making a point of pushing my hand through my messily styled hair. The austere look on her face immediately softens.
Women always love me until they get to know me.
Uncle West’s office is in the far back, past several desks for assistants and paralegals, but no one says a word to stop me. Regardless of the metal detectors and the Night’s Watch cosplay downstairs, it’s a good thing I’m not here for anything more sinister than a tense conversation. If I was some bitter victim of the criminal justice system out for revenge, there wouldn’t be much standing in my way.
West doesn’t seem surprised when I burst into his office and slam the door shut hard enough behind me that it rattles in its frame.
“Did you know about this?” I growl as I toss a stack of photocopied papers onto the desk in front of him.
“Let me call you back,” he says into the phone receiver in his hand before hanging up. My favorite uncle leans back in his chair, not bothering to look down at the papers on the desk. His voice is faintly chastising. “It’s always nice to see you, nephew.”
Without waiting to be invited, I yank a chair back from the desk and sink down into it as I glare at him. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
With a sigh, he picks up the top page and glances at it before tossing it back down. “I already know why you’re here, and there is absolutely nothing I can do.”
Bullshit.
“There’s always something you can do. Aren’t you the guy who never stops talking about how it was the IRS that took down Capone? If there’s a crime, there’s a way, that’s always you when you’re bragging about a case. Well, this isn’t just a crime, it’s a fucking travesty.”
“And it’s also ironclad.” West leans back in the leather chair and drums his fingers on the African Blackwood desk that probably costs as much as the average paralegal’s salary. He might pretend to be the morally upstanding assistant district attorney, but he enjoys the trappings of wealth as much as the next trust fund baby. “I’ve read over this thing at least a dozen times, and at least half of those were only because your father begged me to help him find a loophole. If you want to get pissy with anyone, it should be him for signing this damn thing in the first place.”
The familiar anger rises in me. “Because he should have known my mother would die in childbirth and invoke the codicil?”
“Of course not.” The look he casts me isn’t without some empathy — we are talking about his sister, after all. “But the fact remains that your mother’s portion will return to Abbott holdings in a year unless you fulfill the requirements. There isn’t any way around it.”
Leaning back in my chair, I lift my legs and rest my dirty heels on top of the immaculate desk. “And the fact that you’re an Abbott doesn’t have anything to do with your unwillingness to help. How much of that money will be going to you if I don’t marry a Founding daughter, dear uncle?”