Page 165 of Priceless

We were close enough to the kitchen that Cam burst out laughing. “Please keep the sass coming, sweetheart. I love it.”

“Seriously though.”

Everett patted the seat on the bench beside him. “Seriously. It’s a good thing.”

“Ooookay.” I sat, and he tucked his arm around me before placing a paper folder in front of me. “What’s this?”

“We have someone who…” Cameron shrugged. “We met him in college. His name is Aiden, and he works in what we’ll call a gray area as far as information. He helps us when we need him to, and because of everything happening with the company, we asked him to look into something about your uncle.”

I accepted the glass of water Micah handed me. “If you sat me down to tell me my uncle is involved in some shady shit, it’s not like I didn’t suspect that. It’s not a huge surprise.”

Everett pulled me in and kissed the side of my head. “No, I don’t imagine so. But Aiden went a step further on this one. We didn’t ask him to, but he found something you need to see.”

Well, that sounded a bit dire. I opened the folder and started to read. Wait… what?

These were the documents for my trust. But… they weren’t the ones I recognized. These said that I was meant to get everything when I turned twenty-one. The trust made provision for my aunt and uncle in a small way, as a thank you for being my guardians, but nothing more.

And there weren’t any restrictions listed. None of the money-managing bullshit I’d been dealing with. No qualifications for receiving it. Just turning twenty-one. Nerves lodged in the pit of my stomach. “Is this some kind of joke? Because if it is, it’s not funny.”

Micah took a slow breath and let it out. None of our bonds had any trace of joking, or even levity. “It’s not a joke, princess.”

I stared at the pages in front of me and read them again. And a third time. “I don’t understand.”

“We believe this is the real trust that your parents signed.” Everett flipped to the last page and showed me the familiar signatures. They were my parents’ signatures. I’d seen my trust paperwork more than once over the years, and I knew the signatures like the back of my hand. “Do you remember the first time you saw your trust?”

“No. I remember seeing it, but not exactly when. Everything was a bit of a whirlwind after mom died. All I knew for a while was that Frank and Laura were taking care of me. By the time I was in high school and starting to think about college, that’s when I actually started asking questions. I didn’t know any better.”

Cameron reached across the table and captured my hand. “Of course not.”

I shook my head. “How is this possible? Or legal? They changed it?”

“Possible?” Everett asked. “Aiden is diving deeper into that for us. Our best guess is that after everything was resolved with your mother’s will, all the legal documents were handed over from her lawyer to Frank’s. With you being so young, he fabricated the new papers, though we’re still wondering about the signatures, since they match. As for it being legal? Absolutely fucking not.”

“I just—” I slumped back in my seat and leaned on Everett. “If this is real, then…”

I couldn’t even verbalize the primal rage that hovered on the edges of my consciousness. If it was true, then the last nine years were for nothing. All their control and the struggle to get Entendre off the ground when I had to beg them to allow me the money to get started. They barely gave me enough seed money to even buy the first round of flowers. But I’d been desperate enough to make it work, and so I’d made it work.

Every single painful comment and attack, all while they were living off money that was mine. And relishing it.

Keeping my breathing even, I closed the folder. “These aren’t the originals. They won’t do anything to fix it.”

“No,” Everett admitted. “But we’re working on that.”

I let my face drop into my hands. “Even Frank isn’t foolish enough to keep copies of documents he’s intentionally trying to bury.”

Cameron smirked. “You’re right. But we won’t get them from him. Our best chance is if your mother’s lawyer, or their firm, still has original copies. With clients like the Caldwells, I’m sure they keep everything they have. Your parents still have charitable foundations that are sustained and run, right?”

They did. And those wouldn’t have been handed over to a new lawyer. Even when I was small and curious, Mom told me that they made sure to keep themselves out of it. To make sure no one had any questions about what was happening with the money. I hadn’t understood what she meant, but now I did.

“If we can prove it, what do we do?”

“Well.” The three of them were smiling, and Everett placed a different folder in front of me. “We didn’t get a chance to tell you everything that happened, because we were a little busy wi?—”

“Fucking you,” Cameron said. “We were busy fucking you.”

I sensed nothing but pride and pleasure from his place in my chest, followed by his thoughts spiraling somewhere dirty. “Cam.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

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