Ayla

“Ayla?” A dark-haired man in a charcoal three-piece suit steps out of an office suite Monday afternoon, extending his right hand. His wrist is adorned with a gold Rolex and his cologne smells like money, but he has kind, emerald eyes that crinkle when he smiles so I decide to stop judging him then and there. “Liam Greenbrier. Nice to meet you. Come on back.”

Liam leads us down a long hallway filled with oil paintings and then through a set of cherry double doors where he points toward his desk and tells me to take a seat. A manila folder rests on top, and he flips it open, revealing a small stack of typed documents.

“I’m sorry about your brother,” Liam says, expression growing somber as he pages through the papers. “He was a good client of mine. Got me season tickets every Christmas.”

Interesting. So he was a generous asshole.

“Never said much. Man of few words,” he says. “You probably already know that. Anyway.” Liam reaches across the table, stapled forms in his hand. “These are your copies of your brother’s last will and testament.”

I pour over the first page, everything neatly typed and double-spaced, filled with legal jargon and formalities. It’s a very straightforward will from what I see so far. Two, maybe three pages long including the list of assets on the last sheet.

My eyes scan the pages one last time because I feel like I wasn’t actually reading the words as much as I was going through the motions, and then I stop when I see my name—and the number beside it.

With trembling fingers grazing my lower lip, I glance across the desk at Liam.

“He left this ... to me?” I ask.

Liam nods.

“That’s a lot of zeroes,” I whisper, reading the number over and over again. “Are you sure?”

“Now this is only liquid assets,” he says. “Once you go through the remainder of his estate, there could be more.”

“More?” I’m half laughing. This feels like a joke. It can’t be real.

Liam squints at me like I’m crazy. I think I’m making him uncomfortable, but I can’t help the way I’m reacting. It isn’t every day that someone drops twenty-two million dollars in your lap and tells you there’s more where that came from.

“A couple things,” he says. “If you’ll notice beside your name, it says forty percent.”

“Okay.”

He flips to the second page, and my eyes land on some lines I must have missed earlier.

Oh, god.

“Bryce designated twenty percent of his estate to a small group of people. His landlord. His physical therapist. His cleaning lady. A couple of others. And forty percent of his estate is designated to one other person,” he says. I already know where he’s going with this. “My secretary’s been reaching out to him for weeks. She’s left several messages with his assistant, telling him it’s an urgent matter in regards to Bryce Renner’s estate, but he’s yet to return our calls.”

“Oh?” My heart trots in my chest. I know where he’s going with this as well.

“You wouldn’t happen to know Rhett Carson, would you?”

My jaw hangs. I don’t know how to answer.

I don’t know how to answer his question without making myself seem like some heartless, selfish weirdo, and maybe that’s a sign that I should’ve put a stop to this a long time ago.

“If he knows you, maybe you could reach out to him?” Liam asks. “I’m familiar with what happened. I imagine he wants nothing to do with Bryce, but legally, he’s entitled to twenty-two million dollars of Bryce’s estate. If he doesn’t want it, it’d default to you since you’re his next of kin.”

“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,” I say, “me contacting him.”

Or me getting another twenty-two mil …

Liam swipes his hand in the air. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have asked; I just didn’t know if maybe you knew each other personally. Anyway, we’ll be sending him a letter soon if we haven’t already.” He sits up in his chair, buttoning his suit jacket. “Oh. One more thing before I forget.”

He hunches over the folder, rifling through the papers in the back and retrieving two white envelopes.

One bears my name, the other bears Rhett’s.

He hands me mine. “In the instance of Bryce’s passing, we were instructed to give you each these letters.”

My hand clutches the envelope, and I press it against my chest. To think that my brother sat down with a paper and pen and wrote a letter to me—it overwhelms me like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. I need to take a second to catch my breath and fight the rush of tears threatening to cloud my vision.

My nose runs, and I want to smile. Liam hands me a tissue.

“Here’s my card.” He retrieves a business card from a shiny silver rack on his desk a moment later, sliding it across the wooden surface. I pull in a deep breath and stack it with my letter from Bryce and the papers that declare I’m officially a multi-millionaire.

I’d trade it all for a shot at what we could’ve had though. I’d give it all away if we could go back, if I could meet Bryce … if he could give me a chance.

“I’ll be in contact with you shortly with all the specifics,” he says. “If you want to arrange an estate planning meeting for yourself, that’s something I can help you with, though it says here that you’re from California, so you’ll probably want to consult someone back home. Just keep me in the loop, and we’ll do everything we can to help settle this for you.”

“Thank you.” I rise, gathering my things, and folding the papers neatly before placing them in my bag. It isn’t until I’m fumbling with the zipper that I realize I haven’t stopped shaking.

Liam walks me to the elevator, apologizes for my loss once again, and tells me to call him if I have any additional questions.

I blink and I’m outside strolling down the sidewalk.

I blink again and I’m past the coffee shop on the corner.

I blink a third time, and I’m halfway across town, headed toward Rhett’s.