“Wait, you mean the whole ‘reading of the will’ thing isn’t even real?” I asked the weasel-faced attorney from Clark and Jeffries after the board meeting. I felt like I’d been lied to by every movie and TV show ever. This couldn’t be true.

“Not anymore,” he said, shrugging his narrow shoulders and smiling thinly, “It used to happen pretty frequently back in the day since most people were illiterate. An estate attorney would gather the entire family around his desk and read the will of the deceased family member and answer their questions about it. These days that sort of reading just isn’t necessary. You’ll have to read it yourself. Sorry.”

I looked at the copy of my grandfather’s will I’d just been handed in disbelief. For some reason I had been certain that there would be some sort of formal reading ceremony. This just felt way too casual. I had to believe that my grandfather would have wanted the pomp and circumstance of a formal reading.

“So, it’s just… all over?” I asked, still not entirely certain that weasel-face wasn’t exhibiting a heretofore unknown sense of humor. He’d been acting as secretary for the Durant Industries board meetings for the past seven months, but I still didn’t know his name. It had never occurred to me to ask and now it was much too late to be polite. He would just be weasel-face forever unless he dropped a business card or something.

“Over? Not hardly,” he replied, smirking condescendingly at my apparent lack of legal wills and trusts knowledge, “In addition to the beneficiaries and the executor named in the will and, in some cases the trustee named in the testator's or testatrix's revocable living trust, the accountant for the estate will need to receive a copy so that he or she can read and understand what the will provides with regard to the payment of claims filed against the estate (such as credit card bills) as well as the payment of any estate taxes that may be due as well as income taxes. There are still a number of formalities to attend to. It’s only over for you and the rest of your immediate family.”

I didn’t like weasel-face I decided right then, tipping over from having no opinion on the man to having a negative one at his unnecessarily long, legal explanation. I could wax poetic about astronaut or engineering shit if I wanted to. I could go on for hours about it. But I didn’t, because it’s an asshole thing to do. Apparently, weasel-face hadn’t gotten the memo that nobody likes a know-it-all.

“What about my cousin Nicholas? You know, Richard’s son?” I asked weasel-face after darting my eyes around the empty room to make sure that my uncle Richard wasn’t around to hear me talking about his son, “Does that mean you have to track him down and give him a copy of the will too?”

Weasel-face sighed.

“Yes, it does,” he said in a resigned, tired tone of voice. “As a beneficiary, Nicholas Durant has to receive a copy of the will just like everyone else. Unfortunately, we have literally no idea where he is. We hired a private investigator to try and find him, but it wasn’t successful; I fired them a few weeks back when they failed to produce any results. They found absolutely nothing that could lead us to Nicholas after a full sixty days. It was pathetic. Ultimately it was only your uncle’s pet military contractors, the Skylark Group, that were finally able to locate him. The only catch is that they won’t actually tell us where he is.”

“Why the hell would they do that?” I asked him in confusion. “If they were hired to find Nicholas, why wouldn’t they give you the address and just leave it up to you to get in contact with him? Why make their own job harder?”

“I really wish it were that simple,” Weasel-face said with an expression of obvious annoyance. “It should be. Frustratingly, it seems that Nicholas was very serious about not being found. Very proactive. He actually had a preexisting contract with his own father’s favorite bird dogs to ensure that they wouldn’t disclose his location if they were ever contracted to find him. He was clearly thinking long-term when he dropped off the face of the earth five years ago. It wasn’t a vacation for him. So, although Skylark knows where he is, they won’t let us reach out to him. Instead, they’re only willing to send one of their own people or an independent third party out to contact him on our behalf.”

“Why?”

“According to them, Nicholas doesn’t want to receive any contact from his family whatsoever. He doesn’t want to take any chances with his privacy. Since Clark and Jeffries works for your family, we can’t know where he is. It doesn’t even work like that from a legal perspective, but whatever, that’s what his contract with Skylark said. Instead, Nicholas will just have to sign a statement that proves he received a copy of the will. An independent contractor has been hired by Skylark to go find him and get a signature, you know a corporate fixer type with an NDA a mile long. That way your cousin’s location will stay a secret forever and ever.”

“Jeez,” I said, rolling my eyes at the drama, “I hadn’t realized that Nicholas inherited so much of Richard’s paranoid neuroticism.”

Weasel-face looked at me curiously. His vivid green eyes narrowed with an obvious, keen intelligence.

“Neuroticism you say?” He inquired, scooping up a legal pad and a pen, “You think that Nicholas has gone crazy? If he is mentally impaired in some way that might actually affect a few very important things about his inheritance. Can you tell me more about your suspicions?”

I laughed and shook my head at the lawyer’s sudden interest.

“No, not at all,” I corrected with a smirk, “I was just being melodramatic. Nicholas is still perfectly sane, at least as far as I know. He’s probably the sanest one in our generation. He was the only one with the good sense to get fully out of the toxic orbit of our family. I only meant that Nicholas clearly went out of his way to make sure that no one from our family can ever find him. I wonder if he’s living in a hollowed-out volcano and stroking a Persian cat like a supervillain somewhere.”

Weasel-face set down the legal pad, looking vaguely relieved.

“Well, if he isn’t doing so now, he will certainly be able to afford to live the Bond-villain lifestyle after the probate process is finally completed,” weasel-face said with a shrug, “he can buy himself a proper lair somewhere tropical.”

We exchanged a bemused smile. Maybe weasel-face wasn’t so bad after all. Alexander II was a giant know-it-all too, but we’d been getting along lately. Zoey had been trying to get me to make some friends. According to her it was weird that the only people I was genuinely close to were David and Cecelia. I’d thought she was crazy until we started making a guest list for our wedding and I barely had anyone to put on it. I hadn’t made any new friends yet, but I was working on being friendlier.

“Did the Skylark people know why Nicholas went off the grid?” I asked, not actually expecting an affirmative answer. I was just making conversation.

Weasel-face shook his head, but his attention zeroed in on me with renewed interest.

“If they know, they didn’t share it with me,” he said with a shrug, “why? Does your family not know? Obviously, my bosses at Clark and Jeffries wouldn’t ever ask about something so personal. I have less tact.”

I looked at him in confusion, although I was pleased by his candor.

“No. No one really knows why Nicholas went off the rails,” I said, “except Richard. And he’s definitely not talking.”

This information seemed to be of interest to weasel-face, although I’m not sure why it would be. Nicholas’ decision to write off the entire family had been a source of considerable interest several years ago, but we’d mostly given up on trying to figure it out. He didn’t want to be found and had made that clear. The end.

Of all the Durant heirs, Nicholas was the youngest and the quietest. He was probably the second smartest (after me). He’d been gifted intellectually, and had excelled at everything he ever attempted athletically, but he was constantly at odds with his father growing up. Their personality conflict festered and grew over the years. Somehow, Nicholas had managed to work for Durant Industries for almost five years after graduating from Yale, but the situation with his father boiled over eventually. Nicholas took off after that, leaving no explanation.

Richard certainly didn’t seem willing (or perhaps able) to have a conversation about Nicholas without becoming apoplectic. If Richard was to be believed, Nicholas took too heavily after his mother and Richard’s estranged ex-wife, Ada. Ada, who moved to Australia immediately after divorcing Richard when Nicholas was about five, had reportedly been somewhat unstable. Personally, I would think that being married to Richard would make someone unstable, not that it was any of my business.

My introspection about my mysterious cousin Nicholas must have shown on my face or something, because weasel-face was now staring at me expectantly.

“Sorry, what?” I said in confusion.

“I asked if you wanted to send a note or something with the messenger hired to visit Nicholas,” he repeated.

I blinked in shock.

“I can do that?” I asked, and he nodded and shrugged.

“I don’t see why not,” weasel-face replied, a sly look turning his angular features even sharper, “we don’t even necessarily need to tell Skylark about it. We can just slip it in between the pages of the will. It’s long and bound and then shoved in a folder, so how would they know?”

There was a reason that Clark and Jeffries were our lawyers. They were the best.

“Yeah, I would like to send him a message, thanks” I said, scooping up the legal pad to write down my cell phone number and a quick, urgent request for him to please call me, “he’ll probably ignore it or throw it away, but at least I can say that I tried to talk to him, right?”

Weasel-face just shrugged again and took the note when I extended it. He tucked it away in a folder.

“You never know. I try not to make predictions about how people will act,” he said with a smile, “people always seem to surprise me in this business.”

to sign up for my mailing list and you will know as soon as Down and Dirty: Scions of Sin Book 3 is live!