Bonus Chapter
Aset of heels clink-clanked against the metal steps before the entirety of the bus started to shake. I slammed my laptop closed and spun around in my chair.
“Why are you here, Vee?” I called out just as the woman herself came into view.
I saw her car turn down the long stretch of highway, pull up to the bus, and idle beside it. So it was no surprise when she dropped a bag of groceries onto the little pop-up table and glared at me.
“Provisions,” she hummed.
“Thank you,” I replied. “Now tell me why you’re really here.”
“Just checking in on my favorite daughter.” She shrugged a shoulder, like I didn’t know her coming all the way out into the middle of nowhere didn’t have some other motive behind it.
Sure, Vee helped me fake my death, escape that house, set me up in the town of my choosing, sent me food and cash over the years. But it came with the understanding that I was at her beck and call. All of us were.
“While I’m here, though, any update on the will?”
I quirked a pierced brow at her. I liked the way the movement tugged at the jewelry, and Vee hated the way she said it made me look like a thug. “That couldn’t have been a phone call?”
“It could have been,” she agreed. “But phone calls are easily ignored. Dropping in unannounced, not so much.”
“Right,” I drew out on a huff as I flipped up my laptop screen, logged into Prescott’s emails, and pulled up the exchange. “Revisions have been submitted, approved, and filed away until ding-dong the dick is dead.”
“And you’re sure you got the wording right?”
I glared at Vee over a shoulder. “I’m not an idiot.”
“I didn’t ask if you were an idiot, Alice. I asked if you got the wording right.”
I grumbled under my breath, clicked on the document, and enlarged the paragraph I’d slipped in.
Prescott’s lawyers would see it but they’d been paid to keep their mouths shut.
And if they didn’t, they’d be blackmailed to ensure they did.
I knew all of their dirty little secrets.
The internet was more permanent than most of these freaks realized and they were all too eager to leave a trail of every sick idea that popped into their even sicker heads.
Vee leaned forward and skimmed the document.
“I, Tate Edward Prescott III, appoint my closest living consanguineous relative, as the executive and trustee of the entirety of my estate, including any prior assets inherited to me by my father… blah, blah, blah…” I read aloud. “That means—”
“I know what it means.” Vee raised a hand. “Thank you.”
“And you think it’ll work?”
“It’ll work. That boy is too stupid to notice or care, for that matter.”
“That boy is a grown-ass, creepy man,” I reminded her. “And that’s not what I mean. Do you really think anyone is going to come forward to claim it?”
“Why wouldn’t they? It’s their money. They deserve it.” Vee crossed her arms over her chest and started tapping her shoe. It made the whole bus shake again.
“What if they don’t want it?” I countered.
Vee didn’t know these girls like I did. She didn’t have a direct view into their everyday lives.
Most of them would rather stay poor and in hiding than admit to the rest of the world that they’re the product of rape.
Or worse, to have their mothers looked at as gold-diggers, because that’s exactly how the media would play them out to be.
Poor folk looking for a handout from the rich white guy who could do no wrong.
“Why wouldn’t they want it?”
“No reason.” I slammed my computer closed for a second time. There was no point arguing with Vee. Not when she had her mind set on something. “The website’s live. Looks legit. Now you need to keep the donations rolling in from all those rich old cunts.”
“Done.” Vee waved a dismissive hand and pivoted on a high-heeled shoe. “Just make sure the funds are distributed evenly, along with the deposits from Bernard,” she added as she clanked down the steps. “Can’t have anyone thinking I’m playing favorites.”
I pushed up from my chair and followed after her. “Thought I was the favorite?”
I smirked as she climbed inside the blacked-out car.
She had a driver today. It was about appearances, especially when it came to the donors she was scamming.
She had to trick them into thinking she was one of them.
But Vee didn’t have as much cash as she let on, mostly because she dished it out to all of us.
The girls Prescott preyed on and the daughters he didn’t keep.
“Your sister’s my favorite,” Vee called back as she pulled the door closed and rolled the window down to eye me over the glass. “You should go see her.”
I shook my head. “No, it’s better if I don’t.”
“She misses you.”
“She hates me.”
“She hated who she thinks you were,” Vee corrected as her glare swept over me from short silver tips to dark combat boots. “I think she’d love who you are now. Come home, Alice.”
“I’m fine right here.” I slapped the side of my conversion bus and grinned, while the thought of being stuck in one place sent a shiver running up my spine.
I liked living on wheels. I liked the option to pick up and leave whenever I got the urge to go somewhere.
And I liked having nothing to hold me down, including the sister who thought I was dead.
“Suit yourself.” Vee brought the window up until she disappeared behind it, and I watched as her car made a U-turn in the open field. It twisted back down the highway the way it’d come a few minutes ago and then it was nothing more than a blip on my security camera.
Curious about Allie and how she jumped down the metaphorical rabbit hole and disappeared into the cyber world?
Then preorder Curiouser, coming soon!