Page 22 of Treasure and Tarot

He could only imagine how Sebastian had felt.

It wasn’t his signature at the bottom of this form.

He’d seen his signature his entire life. He knew exactly what his signature looked like, and that wasn’t this. Not that he’d thought that he’d ever signed it. He knew better. But that wasn’t the point.

The point was he hadn’t signed it.

Attached to the letter was a business check. And that, his motherhadsigned. It was a check for two million dollars.

It was an uncashed, unsigned check.

It wasn’t fair. This whole thing wasn’t fair.

His heart aching, he grabbed his phone and called his mother again, rage burning in him.

“Answer your motherfucking phone,” he snarled.

“Colton, Colton, is that you? Sorry, honey, we’ve been out on the boat. We haven’t been back in for not even fifteen whole minutes. How’s it going?”

He was so angry for a second he couldn’t even breathe, much less speak. How could she sound so normal, so easy, so all right when his whole world had crashed like a burning zeppelin.

Bang.

The letter slid across the desk, and he grabbed it.

“Colton, are you there? Honey, I think we lost him.” She had no idea how true her words were.

“You tried to buy Sebastian so that he wouldn’t let me know that I had a baby. He tried to get hold of me. Let me know that I have a daughter, and someone signed my rights away.”

There was a moment of silence, and then his father came on the phone. “Now who knows what that greedy little son of a bitch told you?”

The pictures on the wall began to shake, to shimmer like they were in an earthquake.

“He hasn’ttoldme anything. He doesn’t have to tell me anything. I’m looking at the paperwork that I didn’t sign that was notarized. I’m looking at the unsigned and uncashed check. Try again.”

His father was silent for a long time. So long that he imagined his father had put him on silent mode in order to talk to his mother. Things started to drop to the floor, thankfully not breaking like he was. Not yet, at any rate.

“I know what you did!” he roared. “How the fuck could you do this to me! I have a daughter! How could you just throw her away!” He was going to stroke right out.

“You were ill; you were hurt. The last thing you needed was a gold digger who got himself pregnant bothering you.”

“What? That was my?—”

“We gave him plenty of money to raise the child. You don’t need the hassle.” They sounded so calm, so logical. They could deny him the chance to know his daughter, to be with Sebastian without a single care. “It’s not like you can marry the young man. This way we guaranteed that you didn’t have any trouble.”

The blood rushed in Colton’s ears and suddenly he couldn’t hear. “Trouble?”

“Sorry, but—” Mother started, and he growled.

“Sorry?”

“Don’t apologize, honey. He’ll be fine. You can have other children. We’ll find you someone suitable. An omega who’s qualified to deal with the kind of lifestyle you lead. Not some…person from wherever.”

He was just going to have an apoplexy. “How can you say that? That’s your granddaughter.”

“No, she doesn’t belong to us. She’s not one of ours. She’s not yours either. There’s paperwork.” Mother was beginning to crack around the edges, and it felt so good.

“I didn’t sign it.”

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