Page 66 of Betting on the Brainiac

This makes him laugh. “Let me guess, while you were working there, you realized there was a way to use your trust to wreak more havoc?”

“Kind of. That trust was set up by my grandmother when Armstrong Industries didn’t suck. It was set aside from profit earned when my grandfather ran the company as an American powerhouse, proud of having global appeal but local roots whereArmstrong Industries did right by its people. He nurtured the company the right way. The money feels untainted to me.”

I’d grown up thinking that’s who we still were, not understanding how shortly after my grandparents’ death my father had pushed the company into profit over quality. “When I found out about the investigation, I’d dreamed for a couple of months of all the ways I could spend ‘the good money’ in my trust to enrage my parents. My grandmother had put a few stipulations on the terms, but as long as I got a college degree, I would inherit when I was twenty-five. But plot twist, I’m twenty-six and I’m not a millionaire. Want to guess who she made the executor?”

“Is there any chance your dad is Lex Luthor, genius supervillain?”

“He’s villain-lite. His weakness is how much he needs to be in control. Most of the time, I can figure out how to flip it on him.”

“I’m conflicted,” Oliver says. “I am sucked into this story, but since I walked in during today’s chapter, I know how it ends, and I kinda hate it.”

“I’m aware my life is a one-season TV show that gets canceled because of its two-star average rating and a viral Reddit review that calls it a bad reality show where a poor little rich girl has petty arguments with a villain who couldn’t be more contrived if his name were Evil McBadguy.”

“That’s not why I’m conflicted,” he says. “I need the hero to win. Tell me you win, Madi.”

“TBD, Oliver. But I like my chances.”

“Then I can make it through this part. I’ll help you down, and you tell me the rest.”

I can slide from the counter, but I let Oliver lift me and set me down again. It’s such a novel feeling that he can do it so easily. “How tall are you?” I ask him as he settles me on my feet. “Sixone?” It’s not a guess. I never get height wrong, except for when I had somehow registered Oliver as shorter when I met him.

“Yeah. Six one. So Evil McBadguy messes with your trust,” he prompts.

I head to kitten territory. “My grandmother’s will left sixty million dollars to be divided evenly among her grandchildren. At the time, there was only me and my one other cousin. She built in her provisions, like wanting each of us to earn a college degree before we could inherit, but she knew there might be future circumstances she couldn’t predict, same as she couldn’t know how many grandchildren she might end up with. So she empowered the executor—”

“Mr. McBadguy.”

“Good old Mr. McBadguy. The will gives him some discretionary power to build in additional stipulations in case he has concerns about an heir’s fitness.”

“Who decides if he’s right?”

“He does.”

“So this is unilateral? There’s no check on him?”

“Yes and no. I could sue him for access, but he’d drag it out until I spent it all fighting him to get to it. Not worth it. But unless any of us is under a conservatorship, we each inherit at thirty no matter what.”

“Why was he talking about how you could have it now if you were married?”

“You heard that, huh? My dad would have changed it to thirty and said it was because I needed to grow up or something. No way to get it sooner. Like a flex. My mom, on the other hand, had other motives.”

“Lady MacBeth enters the chat.”

“Eerily good guess. My mom is a master manipulator, but she’s notbad. Just very invested in the Armstrong image.”

We’ve reached the office, and the kittens are done nursing, but they’re not asleep for once. Without discussing it, we both settle on the floor to watch them play slo-mo demolition derby.

“My mom tried to get me to quit Teak Heart—that’s the store—for weeks. Depending on the day, me volunteering there gave her arrhythmia, pneumonia, botulism, age spots, and one time, scurvy.”

“Sounds medically complicated,” he says politely.

“When it didn’t work, she went to the nuclear option. Said that they had some concerns about my emotional development, so they were adjusting the terms of the trust to make sure I was really ready for it at twenty-five. They were adding a new metric. Arranged marriage.”

He tugs on his ear. “Thought you said arranged marriage. Or did I fall back in time two hundred years?”

“I did say arranged marriage. Not that she used those words. She said my lack of direction had disrupted her health, and the doctor said the only way she could recover was to limit her stress. They decided my ‘pattern of recklessness’ was grounds to limit the damage I would do with too much money before I was ready and got the estate attorney to amend the trust. So no inheritance until I’m thirty, unless . . .”

He narrows his eyes. “Unless you quit embarrassing the family by telling them that criminal negligence is a bad look?”

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