Page 162 of Priceless

He let out a long sigh and leaned back in the chair. “The trust is legal. It’s fucking absurd, and the grossest overreach of control I’ve ever seen in any kind of these, but it’s legal.”

I frowned. “That’s not fun, but what does it matter? She’ll get everything in a year because of her contract with Frank.”

“Will she?” He looked at me and tapped his fingers on the arm of his chair. “There’s a good chance we’re about to destroy McCabe fabrics, or restructure it so thoroughly Frank doesn’t know what hit him. Once his company is gone, he won’t want to sign anything over to Ocean. I know they have a contract, but I could see a good lawyer having a chance to overturn it.”

“Because their contract was entirely based on a deal that won’t exist anymore?”

“Exactly.”

I scrubbed my hand over my face. “Okay, let’s say that happens. And Ocean has to wait five years before it pays out. She won’t need money.” We had more than enough money for lifetimes.

“There are accounts they can’t touch, thankfully,” Everett said. “Rather, there’s ones they’re not supposed to touch. At this point I put nothing past him. But that’s not the problem.”

“Let me guess,” Cameron said from behind me. He stood in the doorway. “The level of control they have over her finances is legally dictated by the trust, meaning it doesn’t matter if she’s married to us. They hold that control until the trust pays out?”

Everett’s jaw was tight, but he nodded.

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

“I wish I was,” he said. “Now you know why I want to punch the monitor.”

Dropping into one of the chairs, I shook my head. “It doesn’t really make sense, does it.”

“How so?”

“You said it yourself. It’s not the normal structure for a trust. Of all the things Ocean has told us, she’s never said anything bad about her parents.” She hadn’t told us much, but the few times she’d mentioned her mother, the memories seemed happy. They stood out because they were some of the few memories she had that weren’t laced with pain.

“The thought did cross my mind.” Cam leaned on the back of the other chair. “Why the hell would they set it up this way? If there was some strange family tradition or a purpose to it, is there a way to find out? What about the will?”

Everett reached behind him, grabbed a folder, and handed it across to us. “I wondered that. The will is very brief. It leaves everything, in trust, to Ocean. But it defers to the details of the trust itself for the rules. There’s nothing in there that changes anything.”

“So, theoretically, if they’re ignoring the fact that they’re not supposed to touch certain accounts, what’s stopping Frank and Laura from rearranging all the finances and the estate itself underneath their company so that Ocean is left with nothing?”

“Until recently, not a damn thing. Until we bought the company. Which explains why Frank is desperate. Which is good for us, because he’s not thinking clearly and making mistakes.”

I leaned forward, elbows on knees. “You’re going to have to walk me through it.”

“Frank thought he had plenty of time to fuck Ocean over on the trust, so he hadn’t bothered yet. But the company was in trouble, and even Ocean’s money wouldn’t be enough to save it, and what he’d have to do would take too long. Especially if he wanted to keep it under the radar.

“Then we entered the picture. I’m assuming Joseph was the one to leak the Firefly deal to him, with his plan for alternate materials already in mind. But he didn’t tell him about that until after we offered the deal.”

Things started to come together in my brain. “So when we made Ocean a part of the deal, he saw an opportunity to do more than one thing? Sabotage us with Frank’s involvement, and use Ocean to spy on us, probably because Frank declared he had something on Ocean.”

Cam swore under his breath and Everett nodded once. “He made the deal with us to save McCabe Fabrics and used the trust to get Ocean on board. But realized after that he wouldn’t be able to rearrange her trust without us noticing, especially in a year. Which gave him even more motivation to say yes to Joseph’s proposal. He needed McCabe Fabrics to be more profitable, but he also needed more profit to offset what he believes he’s losing by giving Ocean what’s actually hers.”

I rubbed my forehead with the heel of my hand. “That’s a bit of a mind fuck.”

“Tell me about it,” Cam said.

On the desk, Everett’s phone lit up. He put it on speaker. “Aiden?”

“The one and only. You’re lucky I can make time in my busy schedule.” His tone was laced with both charm and sarcasm.

“Still the cheeky asshole, huh?” I asked.

“Well, first, it’s arsehole, but yes. And you’ll find your paper trail in your inboxes. More than enough to do what you need.”

I opened the email that appeared and started to scroll. There they were. Emails between Frank and Joseph’s personal account—one the Zenith IT department couldn’t access. It was everything we feared. Frank was all too happy to sabotage and lower the quality of his fabrics. Because he’d already been doing it for years in an attempt at solvency.

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