Page 34 of The Wicked

“Sneaky? Underhanded? Dishonest? Yup, it is, and there’s not a darn thing I can do about it. I have some savings, but there’s no way I can make the amount I need in two years.”

“Talk about shooting yourself in the foot—Nico’s furious with the way they acted at the Peninsula last week, and I bet LKB will end up going bust if you’re not running it.”

“Probably.”

And that hurt too. Everything I built got destroyed. I was twenty-six years old, and I didn’t have a single tangible thing to call my own.

“But what about the codicil?” Darla asked. “You don’t need $250,000.”

What was she talking about? “What codicil? I don’t even know what that is.”

“It’s a legal document that alters a will,” Brooke explained. “I learned that much from Aaron.”

“Grandpa’s will didn’t have one of those.”

I’d never known Darla to be anything but cheerful and easygoing, but I caught a flicker of anger in her blue eyes. “Yes, it did. He wrote it two weeks before he died, and I witnessed it.”

“But…but…”A codicil?“Why didn’t Asa say something?”

Asa Phillips was Aaron’s mentor, and he’d been Grandpa’s lawyer for as long as I could remember. EJ had fired him after the Darla episode, after he’d written the agreement that left her with the house on Valley Drive and the document proved to be watertight.

“East wrote it himself, so Asa most probably didn’t know. Your grandfather always was fond of his secrets.”

“What did it say?” Brooke asked.

“I can’t remember the exact wording, hun, but East was annoyed with Easton the Third in particular, and also with Kayleigh and Lillian. He saw what they were doing to Sara, don’t think he didn’t. Easton’s earnings goal was increased by all the money East had paid to bail him out of his messes over the years—$176,000 if I remember rightly—and Sara was to get $200,000 in cash toward her target.”

My knees went weak, and I sat down on the nearest semi-solid object, which was a basket of yarn. The yarn compressed, and I ended up stuck with my legs in the air. Crap. Brooke and Darla hauled me up by my arms, and Brooke kept an arm around my waist.

“I-I only ever saw the original will. There was nothing else.”

“Darla, do you know what happened to the codicil?” Brooke asked.

“East put it in the safe with the rest of his paperwork. He told me that Asa Phillips had a key, and he’d open the safe and deal with the papers when the time came.”

This…this was crazy. “I was right there when Asa opened the safe, and I’m sure he went through all the papers. Why wouldn’t he have mentioned a codicil?”

Blue had been listening in, leaning against the wall with a mug of coffee in her hand.

“Well, there are three options, obviously. Either East changed his mind and tore up the codicil, or Asa got paid off by one of the beneficiaries and ‘lost’ it, or one of your slimy relatives got to the safe before Asa did and made it vanish.”

“Strike out option two,” Brooke said. “There’s no way Asa would have accepted a bribe.”

“East was still grumbling about Easton the day before he passed, so he didn’t change his mind,” Darla chimed in.

“Which leaves option three. Somebody quite literally stole your inheritance. The big question is who?”

11

GARRETT

Damn, craft forums were a minefield. I’d assumed there couldn’t be much controversy when it came to beads and thread, but it seemed I’d been wrong. Five days had passed since I wrote my plea for help, and suddenly I had answers.

BeadGirl1984:Those roses look like Swarovski to me.

Love2Craft:No, they’re GJ florals.

MsSparkle:You’re both blind—they’re quite clearly from the Naruki Valentine series.

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