Page 65 of The Billionaire's Cinderella

He gets up, grabs a yellowed file folder from the desk and comes back, his expression unfathomable.

“What is it?” I ask, bemused.

“Divorce papers. A revised will that was never executed.” He takes a deep breath. “Good old Dad finally grew the balls to do the right thing. This is all dated about a week before he died. I found them in my mother’s safe.”

My mind blanks out. Completely.

“I-I don’t understand,” I say, desperately trying to get up to speed. “What are you telling me?”

“I’m saying that if he’d lived long enough, our father would have divorced my mother to be with yours. He would’ve written you and your mother into his will. And my mother knew all that and kept it quiet. We’ll never know what really happened between the two of them, but my best guess is that he told her his plans and demanded a divorce a few days before he died.”

I blink, my mind churning and my heart thumping.

That can’t be true. There’s a mistake somewhere.

“But…”

“See for yourself,” he says before thrusting the folder onto my lap, opening it up and pointing to a flagged passage several pages in. “That paragraph right there.”

I’m afraid to look and afraid not to look. The one thing I’ve always been is the inconvenient and not-good-enough daughter of a rich man who never bothered to claim me. It’s the one central belief of my life. That fact has skulked in the shadows of my thoughts ever since he died and left us penniless. Whether I like to admit it or not—and I hate admitting it—that fact has affected the way I think about myself. The way I talk to myself. My relationship with Jonas and now with Ryker.

If I weren’t good enough for my own father, how on earth could I ever expect to be good enough for anyone else?

And now…

What if I was wrong the whole time? What if my entire belief system is built around some stupid lie that I told myself? What then? And if my father really did love and want me, then what about Ryker? Could he really love and want me, too? Or maybe that’s not the question I should be asking. If my father really did love and want me, then could I muster up the self-confidence to believe that a wonderful man like Ryker could also love and want me?

What if the answer is a resounding yes?

I search my brother’s face, hoping for some answers. I don’t find any. The only thing I see is a steady beam of compassion.

“Go ahead, Ella. It’s okay.”

I nod. And somehow, somewhere, I find the courage to read the type at the end of his index finger.

As for my precious Valerie and my beloved daughter Mirabella, I bequeath the following…

I gasp and clap my hands to my mouth to stop an embarrassing sob, looking away before the words burn my retinas. Swear to God, it’s like staring straight at the sun. This is the kind of thing you take precautions about. You ease into it. So I take my time about it and look again.

…my beloved daughter Mirabella…

There it is, in black and white. The thing I always needed. Hell, I don’t even care if he bequeathed me his recycled toothpick collection. The beloved is enough.

For two or three long beats, I can’t stop the tears.

“Oh my God,” I say, my voice muffled against my hands. “Oh my God.”

“There’s more,” he says again.

“No more! I can’t take it!”

“Don’t you want to know what he left you?”

“It doesn’t matter.” I hastily wipe my tears and try to pull it together. “And you said he never signed this will anyway.”

“It matters to me,” he says grimly. “I didn’t like the way my mother treated you. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t your fault. You were just a kid.”

“So what are you saying?”

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