Page 100 of Vicious Arrangement
“You are insane,” I say. “Seriously.”
“No, I’m smart, see the thing is I don’t have to win this, but because I have that will, it’s enough to be able to challenge your dear, dead grandfather’s will. There are shares he thought went to him but your mother put them in my father’s name. I have them, rather, my mother did. In other names so she could live off the earnings and still get money from her ex.”
“This isn’t how things work,” I say, the anger back, pulsating inside me. “You’re not a Templeton.”
The courts will hear this, I’ll probably lose in the end, but that’ll be years from now. I’ll challenge it, put on a sob story, flipthe script, say your grandfather knew and murdered my father, and had it staged like he died by suicide. You know our father had millions that your grandfather invested in Templeton’s? I’m owed that.”
“You won’t get it.”
“I don’t have to. Imagine the case tied up in the court system for years, imagine all the stories I could spin to destroy you, the business, and your family.”
I down the rest of my drink. “I’ll think about it.”
There’s no way this is happening. He’s trying to scare me into giving him money. He has no leg to stand on. Even if what he said were true, I’m my mother’s only child. I’m the heir to the actual fortune. Not him. His father took the money my mother had.
But I need him gone, off my back.
He’s not, however, getting even one fucking cent.
“You have forty-eight hours.”
He hangs up.
I go to throw the glass but stop myself, pouring a drink instead, and I down it. Then another.
He might not have a leg to stand on, but he could take it to court and definitely cause damage to Templeton Properties.
So I need to think through my next move. Depending on how good his lawyers are, it could be tied up for years until it gets thrown out. Civil cases are a fucking bitch.
And I didn’t miss the underlying threat, the real issue.
He mentioned my family a few times, which makes me uneasy. He knows I’m married. I never announced it but it’s easy enough to find.
I close my eyes.
He probably knows what Aria looks like.
I make a note to look into security, to get her a guard, but even as I write it down, I fucking know she’s never going to go for it. And then there are logistics with the hospital.
Aria already feels trapped. A guard might be the last straw.
Is it worth it when I don’t know just how far he might go? I don’t want to lose her. I don’t want her to leave me.
I’m betting this Aaron prick is fucking sure I’m, at my core weak, and worried about image. He thinks, I bet, I’ll cave.
The drink isn’t enough, and I pour one more. I’ve never dealt with the abuse, why should I? It happened, it’s done, it’s in the past. But I suffered and moved on, Grandfather never dealt with mom’s death and neither did I. Like him, I pushed my feelings down, covered them, and pretended they weren’t there even when they bubbled like acid and ate at me.
I had Asher, my saving grace, a good kid, a good man. A friend. A real brother.
This Aaron is no one. He never suffered like I did, never had to hear his mother suffer, had to live with knowing she died to protect him.
And he never had to stare for hours into her dead face and not cry. Not make a fucking sound or even move.
Now they’re pushing out, and I can’t stop the memories. I remember the pee running down my leg, I remember the hunger and nausea, and trying to be quiet and ignore the accusations, the blame my father put on me. The blame for Mom’s death.
A blame that’s followed me in Oscar’s years of coldness, indifference, harshness. I’d rather have been poor and loved than rich and hated.
My vision blurs and?—
