Chapter Three
When the alarm went off, Melanie’s eyes opened slowly and she let out a deep, long suffering sigh as she stared at her ceiling. There was a crack, which she had yet to patch up, no matter how many times she told herself she would get to it sooner or later.
Later never came.
Now, it seemed to mock her as another failure in her life, making her want to close her eyes again and ignore its presence.
But she couldn’t do that. She couldn’t do that because she had a phone call to make.
Last night, after she had received the fax and gone over every inch of that contract, finding the place that marked where the loophole had originated from, Melanie had sent an email out to all of her investors, informing them that she had something important to discuss in the morning.
Then she had promptly shut off her phone and climbed into bed, willing her mind to shut off long enough for her to fall into a fitful slumber. It hadn’t been easy, but at least she had been successful in accomplishing that, if nothing else.
Now, she forced herself to sit up and place one foot in front of the other until she was standing in front of her closet door, where she faced a form-fitting and professional black dress hanging from the top of the door. She knew it would show off her curves tastefully. It was the one that she had been so close to choosing yesterday, but had not had the chance to touch, actually, until now. She matched it with the shoes that were still sitting at the end of her bed and touched up her dark hair with some mousse and a little product to keep it from falling out of place, before grabbing her cell phone off her bedside table and heading into the kitchen, where she set a cup for coffee.
Melanie always thought carrying coffee into a meeting made her seem more professional, even when she didn’t drink a sip of it. While nobody would be able to see her during this call, looking professional always made her feel more confident in her life choices—even if they were bad and possibly future-threatening ones.
Once her coffee was ready, she placed the mug on her kitchen table and began dialing numbers, adding them to the conference call, one by one, until she had all her investors on the line.
“Good morning, ladies and gentleman,” she said, her voice cool and collected and decidedly not sounding like she had just lost millions of dollars’ worth of investments overnight, “thank you for joining me on this fine day. I’m sure you’re all wondering what this is about and I would like to remind you just how much you all trust me and value my ideas as I—”
“Sorry, Miss Brunswick,” a deep male voice said, “if I may interrupt for just a second? This is Henry Graham and I’m just wondering why I received notice from my bank yesterday that you returned my investment? Are you no longer interested in working with me? Have I done something to offend? If so, I apologize and I would like to amend whatever it so that we might come to an agreement.”
Melanie furrowed her brow, confused. “What do you mean?” she said, but before she could finish the sentence, another voice spoke up. This one was female.
“I’m curious about that, too. Hi, Melanie,” she said, “this is Rowena Black and I just received a call from my accountant last night about my investment. Is this a mistake on the bank’s part or do you really not want the money?”
Several voices now spoke up, all voicing identical concerns that confounded Melanie so much that she couldn’t think with all of them shouting at her at the exact same time.
“I’m sorry,” she said, cutting them all off with the volume of her voice. “Let me call you all back. I just have to…check on something. I’ll call you back.” She pressed the button to end the conference call and made her way back to her home office, opening up her laptop and checking her email. She had several from her investors, all with screenshots of their bank accounts, which let them know that they had had their money returned and Melanie’s mouth practically gaped open at the sight.
What was going on?
Why would somebody go and pay off all of her debts for her? She thought, once again, about her father, but immediately dismissed the idea. Not only was he gone, but he would probably never have bailed her out like that. Instead, he would have made her beg for the money and would have probably held it over her head for the rest of his life—however short it would have been. She would have been paying off his corpse until she was old and gray with the interest rate he would have tacked on.
But he was gone, so there was no possible way that he could have done this. No way that he could have foreseen something like this, either. Still, she made a few calls to his old accounting firm to see if maybe he had a fail-safe in place for his children. Maybe they’d gotten word that Melanie had taken money from investors and they’d just settled the accounts without a second thought. It was a long shot, but Melanie didn’t know what other explanation there could be.
As she’d suspected, there was no such fail-safe in existence. She received several apologies from the accountants for her failed business negotiation and belated sympathy for the passing of her father, before the call ended and she was left far more confused than she had started. Though, to be honest, there was relief that came with having not one cent of debt in her name. She’d always been able to keep on top of it.
Hell, even her school loans were paid off with what little she had gotten in inheritance from her father’s estate (though, most of her education had been paid for by her generous college fund), and that which her siblings hadn’t stolen from her and her mother.
She remembered the day they were all invited to the lawyer’s office to hear the reading of his last will and testament, when she saw her siblings for the first time in nearly a decade. She had been holding her mother’s hand when her brother and sister sauntered in, wearing expensive suits and jewelry. Her half-brother, Ian, was the spitting image of their father, and so close in appearance to Melanie herself that, if it weren’t for the clear difference in their ages, she would have thought they were meant to be twins. Their sister, Ann, on the other hand, was of lighter complexion, with dimples and a mole on her chin. If it weren’t for her steely eyes and smirk, Melanie would have thought she was an imposter. But she was definitely a Brunswick.
She had a temper.
“What is she doing here?” she had hissed, looking down at Melanie’s mother, who held a handkerchief to her nose, practically hiding behind it. “I thought Daddy had the good sense to divorce her. Finally.” She stood with her hands on her hips and a diamond watch sparkling on her left wrist.
“She’s with me,” Melanie spat back.
“Aw, you still live with Mama?” Ian teased. “How cute.”
Melanie flipped him off, before turning to the lawyer, who cleared her throat and leveled a disapproving look at all of them. She held up a thick file with their father’s name printed across the top in Times New Roman and set it down on the desk in front of her, motioning silently for the two newcomers to take their seats. They did, each of them crossing one leg over the other, like their father used to.
Like Melanie did.
Melanie put her own leg down and repositioned herself in her seat, still holding tightly to her mother’s hand as she straightened her back and looked to the lawyer, expectantly.
“Your father’s last will and testament,” she began, “was rather brief. Each of his legitimate children, he stated, would receive an equal share of his estate, which adds up to roughly…six hundred million dollars.”
“Are you kidding me?” Ian huffed.
“Our father was a billionaire!” Ann added. “What happened to all of his money?”
“I was just about to get to that,” the lawyer sighed. “He left a rather sizeable amount for his youngest child, Melanie Brunswick, in a college fund, which is currently being used to fund her education.”
“She’s in her twenties already!” Ian pointed out. “Shouldn’t she have finished her education by now?”
“I have two more years at Harvard,” Melanie informed them, “so no; my education is still ongoing.”
“College funds shouldn’t be used for graduate school,” Ann huffed. “You should be handling that yourself. Take out loans like the rest of us.”
“Neither of you took out loans,” the lawyer pointed out, receiving glares from both of them. “Your father wrote that down as a note in case you argued that point,” she informed them, turning the file around so that they could clearly see the note in their father’s handwriting. “Besides, with the increase in tuition, since your father set this fund aside for Melanie, it seems that she will have to take out loans to pay for her last year of graduate school.” She turned to Melanie. “My apologies.”
Melanie sighed. “It’s fine,” she said. “Let’s just move on, please?”
“Alright then,” the lawyer turned a page in the file. “Your father has also left a directive to donate thirty percent of his overall wealth to the many charities he supported, which is separate from his overall estate, which is why you’re not each getting a cut of a full billion dollars.”
“He gave to charities plenty during his life,” Ian scoffed. “Greedy bastards don’t need anything else from him.”
“Do you even hear yourself?” Melanie spat. “Do you hear the irony in your own words?”
Ian rolled his eyes. “Whatever,” he said. “What else did our father give away?”
“That,” the lawyer said, “I am not permitted to tell you. Another directive asks for my discretion over your father’s dealings. I am also required to inform you that half of his estate will be going towards paying off his final debts and to taxes, so that the final amount each of you get is…just over a hundred million.”
“A hundred…you must be joking!” Ian boomed, sounding so much like their father that, for a moment, Melanie was actually convinced that he was in the room with them. Even her mother jumped and stared up at him. “What kind of business am I supposed to be able to run with a hundred million dollars? I can’t even pay my investors back with that kind of money.”
“Well, frankly sir,” the lawyer said, “that’s on you.”
“I am his eldest child,” Ian growled, leaning down into her space. “I want a bigger cut.”
“I can’t do that,” the attorney said, standing up. She was half-a-foot taller than he was, and she stood tall, holding her own ground. “You’re all his legitimate children. His instructions were clear—”
“Wait a second,” Ann suddenly piped up. “She’s not legitimate!” She pointed a bony finger at Melanie. “Daddy got that…whore pregnant while he was still married to my mother. It took nearly a year for their divorce to be finalized before he could marry again. Technically, she isn’t a legitimate child. Not fully.”
The lawyer sighed and looked at Melanie for a long moment. “Since, her parents were eventually married, that would have legitimized her birth,” she said. “Though, I do suppose you’re right; technically, Melanie Brunswick is not as legitimate as either you or your brother…”
“So…?” Ann was smiling almost wickedly at the prospect of a bigger payout. Melanie felt her stomach fill with dread.
“I suppose it would be legal to relocate half of her final inheritance to each of you, bringing hers down to fifty million and yours up to a hundred twenty-five, each. That’s all I can offer, though.”
“We’ll take it,” Ian and Ann said in unison. They shook hands with the lawyer while Melanie watched, her heart aching. Not from the loss of money, but from the betrayal of her own family.
She had known that her parents’ relationship was born out of infidelity. Her mother had told her so when she was a teenager, when Melanie had been quick to judge one of her friends’ fathers, after he’d married his mistress, leaving her mother alone and penniless.
“Love is love, my heart,” she had said, already two glasses of wine deep before she’d even touched her dinner. “Your father was married when we met and fell in love.”
But, she had never imagined…
Melanie had held back the tears as she squeezed her mother’s hands and watched her two greedy siblings take part of her inheritance for themselves. The lawyer cut the checks for each of them and they left the office with awful, satisfied smirks on their faces, not even sparing Melanie a second glance. Then the lawyer handed her a check with a sympathetic smile on her face.
“Your father spoke highly of you,” she said. “You’ll be fine.”
Melanie just nodded, before tugging her mother to her feet and leading her out of the office. Once they were outside, she signed the check over to her mother so that she could buy the apartment they were living in, as well as live comfortably for the rest of her life.
“My heart,” her mother had whispered in her ear as she hugged her tight, and suddenly Melanie felt like she’d gotten the lion’s share of wealth. At least, she thought, she had a parent who loved her still. She doubted that either Ian or Ann had that.
In present day, though, she was fresh out of luck. Her mother was on dialysis somewhere due to years of heavy drinking, and most of her money was going into treatment until she could find a new liver. The only thing that Melanie had allowed her mother to give her with the inheritance was the security deposit for the apartment she was currently living in.
If she didn’t do something quickly, she was going to lose that, too.