Page 16 of Mase
She’s branded me without realizing it. I thought my wife was my biggest downfall, but I already know it’s not. Letting her go will be.
SEVEN
MASE
It’s beenweeks since I saw her and felt her in my arms, but I can’t think of anything else. I’m barely functioning. The number of times I’ve considered asking Owen to track her down is ridiculous, and I’ve given myself a constant barrage of reasons why that is not a good idea.
The top one being all hell has broken loose lately; my four best friends’ lives are as hectic as my own.
When I asked Reed to travel with me to my father’s office to listen to his will being read, I expected him to accompany me with no issue. What I didn’t expect was a tirade of poor excuses and to ultimately be left with no lawyer when there’re three of my father’s best legal team staring me down like I have no right to be here.
I have every fucking right!
This company was funded on my mother’s dime. My dead mother, to be precise. The same mother who barely reached thirty-three years old before she was killed in a car accident while trying to leave her abusive husband, withseven-year-old me in the back seat witnessing the horrors of it all.
“You don’t have legal representation?” Gareth Barnes goads. He was my father’s favorite attorney, the one who gets him out of the assault-and-battery charges of the women he falls into bed with.
I glare down the scumbag and sit forward, forcing the piece of trash to slink back into his seat away from me.
“I don’t need representation. This is simply a reading of his Last Will and Testament.” The darkness in my tone is full of feigned confidence.
His thick, caterpillar-like eyebrows rise, and he shoves his glasses up his nose as he fidgets from side to side.
Reed reassured me my mother made sure there were no loopholes in the legalities of the business—her father had insisted on it before my parents’ marriage.
Every cent of the financial business should belong to me now, along with the relevant shares, but something tells me my father won’t have made it that easy for me. He hated me almost as much as I hated him. When I left and never returned, I didn’t just walk out on him as a parent, I walked out on the business, and in his eyes, it was the ultimate betrayal.
Oliver clears his throat. He’s a decent enough man and knew my mother when she was alive. Shame he didn’t help her when she needed it. I might have actually liked him if he had.
“This is all standard, Mason. You’re already aware of your father’s Last Will and Testament. Here’s your copy.” He slides the paperwork over to me, and I don’t even spare them a glance. Had it not been for my mother’s money being invested in this business, I would burn it to the ground with a smile on my face, and the hatred rolling off these men in waves tells me they know it.
“Anything else?” I can’t wait to get the fuck out of here.
Oliver shifts in his chair. “Actually, there is one clause he was able to ascertain.”
“Of course there is,” I grit out through clenched teeth, wishing Reed had drowned in the damn lake he went to with his newfound family. Leaving me here exposed to these damn vultures has irritation thrumming through my veins.
Since the moment he rediscovered his one-night stand is pregnant with his child, the man has done everything in his power to ensure his place in her already made family. The issue with that comes when he’s deceiving her, working with her father behind her back to take control of the shares she owns within her father’s business. Still, he’s my fucking attorney, which our company pays him well for, so he should’ve been here.
Even Shaw offered to accompany me, mainly to get out of a scheduled family meal he has to attend at his brother-in-law’s estate. Unfortunately for him, his wife is a Mafia princess and her brother is the Capo of the Mafia. He holds Shaw’s balls in a firm vise so fucking tight it’s a wonder he can still get an erection, let alone have kids.
Lucky bastard might have it tough, but in my eyes, he has it all—a family. Something I can’t see happening for me anytime in the future despite how much I wish for it.
“It’s nothing to worry about, just a small clause to protect an asset.”
My spine bolts straight, and my forehead creases as I lean forward with intrigue. “What asset?”
Just what the fuck has my father gotten himself into? Correction, what the hell has he gotten me into?
Oliver chuckles awkwardly, then raises his hand. “Nothing to worry about. Don’t worry,” he says as if hearing my inner thoughts. “He has insisted on you becoming guardian of your sister until she finishes school, then all this”—he taps the sheets in front of me—“will be yours.”
I rear back, stunned.
What fucking sister?
Guardian?
He’s moved the fucking goal posts is what he’s done.
