The verdict.

The grand fucking finale.

Before I knew it, I was in Eli Cole’s home office, and even before the envelope containing the will arrived, a bad feeling gripped me. The stale room, stuffed with law books and old leather and an old man, felt like the wrong place to be.

Eli wasn’t overtly nice to me anymore. Not impatient either, but instead highly professional. When he ushered me over to a chair, he didn’t refer to me as “son” as he often did, and he didn’t insist on serving me coffee or tea when I told him no the first time. Instead, he looked at me like he knew I’d fucked up his son’s face, and that made me restless.

After the messenger delivered the will, he rubbed his nose with the back of his hand, slid his reading glasses on, and cut the envelope with a letter opener, utterly silent. My posture on my seat in front of his desk was guarded and tense. I followed his pupils as he skimmed through the verbiage. He was quiet, too quiet for the longest time, and I felt hot blood whooshing between my ears.

Jo had looked so fucking smug at the funeral. She hadn’t exchanged one word with me. Didn’t try to beg…

But then, I was so careful…

So cunning…

So agreeable to my dad all those years, up until our last encounter before he died, when I told him…

“Baron…” Eli kept pulling at an imaginary goatee, like he was trying to rub the concern off of his face. His tone told me what I didn’t want to hear.

I shook my head. This was not happening. I didn’t need the fucking money. I made millions myself. Not a fraction of what my dad had, but still.

It was about Jo not getting away with fucking murder.

It was about not walking around the world feeling hollow and cheated.

It was about justice.

“Give that to me.” I reached for the file and snatched the will from his hand. I flicked through the document as fast as I could, my pulse hammering so furiously I thought my heart was going to explode. Hell, half the shit I was reading didn’t even register. But there were two things that stood out to me immediately:

First, the will was handwritten. It would be almost laughable, if it weren’t for the fact it was, indeed, my dad’s handwriting and dated well before he got sick. I flipped to the final page to the signatures of the two witnesses. I didn’t recognize either name, but that wasn’t unusual. Lawyers often called in their employees in to act as witnesses.

Second, there was a disinheritance clause.

“He put in a fucking disinheritance clause!” I punched Eli’s desk on a dry scream.

The more I read, the more my blood boiled. He’d appointed Josephine to be the executor. But that didn’t bother me as much as the main deal: Josephine Rebecca Spencer (née Ryler) was to inherit his entire estate. I was getting a measly ten million dollars.

The disinheritance provision meant that if I were to challenge the will in any way, I’d get nothing. Just an extra fuck you to his beloved only son.

Jo had just become filthy rich in her own right.

And I had just been reduced from an almost-billionaire to a man who was still rolling in it, but wasn’t going to make any Forbes lists anytime soon. Not that I cared. The money didn’t mean shit. Revenge did.

I said nothing while Eli watched me, his face wrinkled and wary.

I’d been blindsided.

My father knew all along that I hated him. Hell, maybe he’d even suspected my plans. I didn’t know how or why, just that Josephine was a step ahead of me all this time. I gulped down a sour ball of anger.

Eli came around to my side of his desk and sat beside me in a second chair. Plastering the will back onto the desk, we both read through it with hunched backs. The will was dated in June, ten years ago. My mind whirled with so many different emotions.

A bad year. A bad month.

“Anything weird happen around that time?” Eli echoed my thoughts. “Anything that could make your father change his mind about the provisions he set up in the prenup?”

My father had been open about the terms of the prenup. She got nothing if she ever filed for divorce. He used his money to keep her married to him, controlling her with the threat of being penniless.

So she’d stuck around. I wasn’t surprised he’d left her something after all these years. But everything? It looked like Jo was the one controlling him all along. That shouldn’t have been a surprise to me either. Fucking Jo. She’d been whispering in his ear again.

The will was dated shortly after I finished high school. After I threw Emilia out of California for good and everything went to shit. After I went off the rails completely…

Ten years ago was when Daryl died.

“Yeah.” I crushed the will between my fingers. “Jo was going through a difficult time. Her brother died. She may have strummed my dad’s emotions. I just…” I took a deep breath. “I guess I’ve always hated him, but it still hurts to know he hated me too.”

“I don’t understand why he’s always favored Josephine over you, but it’s time to move on with your life, son.” Eli knew what my friends didn’t.

When I was twenty-two, the HotHoles all came back to Todos Santos for Thanksgiving. We all stayed at Dean’s house and got plastered. I’d just gotten accepted to law school, so I thought it was a good idea to wander into Eli’s study in the middle of the night and look through his shit. He was there, and I was so drunk, so lost, so sad, that somehow, I’d ended up confiding in him about the abuse.

I’d kept my mouth shut about my mother’s murder, though, just like I had with Emilia.