Chapter Forty-Seven
FORTY-SEVEN
Rocky
THE HEIR OF NOTHING (CONTINUED)
“What the fuck did you do?” Trent sneers, barreling toward me. He’s a slingshot, but I’m a wrecking ball swinging toward him. When I step forward, unafraid, he loses balance and staggers back on the lawn. He rights himself before he eats grass.
Hedges flank this area of the backyard, and beyond the neatly pruned wall of green lies the morning sun glistening against the sea. Beautiful scenery, as summer has slipped into early fall, made exceedingly gorgeous when Trent Waterford begins to lose his ever-loving mind in front of me.
I force down a smile.
It’s easy when I’m still uncertain if he’s going to redirect his anger onto Hailey. I stop at the edge of the patio, putting enough distance between Trent, his brother, and my sister to ease my nerves.
“Me?” I point a finger at my chest. “I didn’t do anything,” I say simply. “What are you even talking about?”
He pushes at the sleeves of his burgundy button-down, like he’s about to fight me. I would absolutely love for him to try. The cherry on top of the shit sundae he’s about to force-feed himself will be my knuckles in his eye socket.
He huffs, “This was you. Don’t give me that bullshit.”
I glare. “Again, don’t know what you’re talking about, Trent.” I put a hand on the stone pillar on instinct. To block him from reaching my sister. “Maybe you want to clue us all in.”
He cranes his neck to look up at his younger brother, then to the table where Hailey is currently sitting, but he’s noticeably eyeing the glass surface.
The paper he just signed to give Jake the other half of the beer company, the paper that just made Jake the sole heir of everything Koning—that paper is no longer there. It’s inside with Phoebe.
Trent pales. “Where’s the document?” He rushes toward the patio.
I drop onto the lawn and instantly block him, my forearm to his chest. “I don’t think you’re allowed in this house.”
Trent snarls. “I don’t give a shit what you think.” He thrusts my chest, but I barely sway. I’m not letting him get an inch farther. He shies from the ruinous look in my eye. “JAKE!” he shouts. “Where’s the fucking document?!”
“Already faxed to the lawyers,” Jake says calmly. “It’s done, man. You can’t reverse this.”
Trent blows back like he’s been sucker punched. “No…no…” His hands fly to his head while his mind reels over the crumbling state of his reality. His life has been slowly disintegrating brick by brick for months, but he’s only just realizing he’s underneath the wreckage.
“This has to be a prank.” He nods to himself and laughs shrilly, his phone squeezing in his fist. “Okay, which one of you fucking losers decided this would be funny? You?” He points his phone at Jake. “Nice try, baby brother.”
Jake crosses his arms. “I didn’t prank you, Trent.”
“Sure, right, yeah. Just cut it out.” Trent shifts his weight uneasily. “I see right through this. You got some weirdo to prank-call me and tell me my wife’s no longer the beneficiary of the Wolfe fortune.”
“What?” Hailey perks up in fake confusion.
“It’s a lame prank, Hay-Hay,” Trent assures her. “That money is still yours.” He mouths to Jake, Mine, with a conceited prickish smile.
I’ve dealt with too many marks who can’t accept they’ve been fooled. He’s far from the fucking first.
Jake raises his hands. “I have no idea who called you. I don’t know anything about this.”
Accurate.
Jake has stayed as far away from the legal holdings of the Wolfe estate as possible. It makes him more innocent in what’s just occurred.
“I have an idea who it was,” I chime in, staring at Trent as he slowly spirals toward his fucked reality again. “The trustee of the Wolfe estate, I’m guessing.”
Trent is barely breathing.
I continue. “They called me earlier this morning and said a second trust document was found in a locked safe at Stonehaven. A newer one. Apparently, Varrick changed his mind on who he’d like to inherit his wealth upon his death.
Signed, notarized, and legally valid—he’s given everything to the other Thornhall.
” I consume his slow-building rage. “To me.”
This is all true.
I was there with Varrick and a lawyer when he legally made me the beneficiary of his trust. A second document that would supersede the one he had legally filed to name Hailey heir. This was all a part of the Koning job.
The Heir of Nothing.
Only, Varrick was supposed to be here to see this part. He was supposed to be alive to still reap all the benefits of the Wolfe fortune and be able to legally change his mind once again and take it away from me. But he’s not here.
And I’m the last Wolfe standing.
“You?” Trent puffs out a stilted laugh. “How convenient. A second document. In a mysterious locked safe.”
“Not a mysterious safe. It was in Varrick’s office.”
“No, I would’ve—”
“You would’ve known about it?” I cut him off. “Because you’ve visited Stonehaven so many fucking times since Varrick died.”
Trent seethes quietly.
I raise my brows. “You refused to rifle through the mansion because of the arduous five-minute boat ride to and from the island.” Ego.
Hubris. Laziness. Never thinking any harm can come to him.
Never thinking the rug will be ripped from under his feet because he’s been protected by Mommy his entire fucking life.
He slides two hands through his hair, disheveling the strands as he pulls them back. “No, you did this.” His angry finger returns to me. “You planted it. Whoever found it—”
“The trustee of the estate found it.”
“Hay-Hay!” Trent yells. “Come here!”
“Hailey, don’t,” Jake says.
“Wife,” Trent threatens between gritted teeth.
I get in his face. “Speak to my sister like that again and you will be choking on this lawn and eating my fucking shoe.”
Trent doesn’t pry his attention off my piercing glare, but he yells to Hailey, “Did you let the trustee of the estate into Stonehaven?!”
“No, you did,” she says. “Don’t you remember? He asked if he could go through Varrick’s office. You said yes.”
Trent is confused. He’s unsure if he did approve this or not. He did. Flippantly. After two glasses of whiskey and a line of coke. Oliver had been there.
“It’s real,” I tell Trent. “The new trust document. You can call the lawyer who notarized it. The trustee has his number.”
He does call him. This isn’t a scenario where we need Everett Tinrock to pose as a lawyer and fake a notary. Though, we have done that plenty of times before.
Trent speaks to a real lawyer, who assures him this is all legal and that Varrick simply had a change of heart. When Trent gets off the call, he smears a hand down his mouth.
“You want to legally dispute it? Fine, but you won’t win,” I say. “It’s not forged. Varrick was of sound mind when he signed it. And the entire town knows he was wavering between me and Hailey, and in the end, he chose me.”
Trent begins shaking his head.
“The Wolfe fortune isn’t yours,” I tell him. “Not by marriage, not by anything. And after—what?—five minutes ago”—I tilt my head—“neither is the Koning fortune. Your baby brother, the one you love so fucking much, is the sole heir of everything.”
The thirdborn finally has the crown.
It only took two deaths, a three-month-long fake marriage, and a summer spent in my deceased family’s mansion with the con man who murdered them.
Top three hardest jobs of all time. No question.
Trent can’t stop shaking his head. “He’s not…” He stakes a glare at Jake now. “Dad will clear this up. He knows I would never just hand you everything.”
“Dad?” Jake frowns. “Dad has been in Sweden since Mom died. He has no shares or interest in the company. He never has. What’s he going to do?”
Trent lets out a low chuckle. “Jordan won’t like this—”
“Jordan is going to rehab.” Jake names their other brother. The secondborn. “I already told him I’d help him out under the stipulation he checks himself into a facility and stays sober. He’s not going to vouch for you.”
Trent stops shifting his weight. He fumes in place, his eyes pinging from me to Jake. “You two fucked me.”
I raise and lower my brows, not admitting to shit verbally.
Then Trent zeroes in on Hailey. “You.” His lip curls. “Did you know about this? Were you a part of this fucking…thing, too?”
Hailey has her knuckles to her cheek, acting sheepish. He sees right through it. She’s basically smiling.
“You fucking bitch—” He makes one furious step toward Hailey, and I cut off his path in an instant. I throw my fist into his mouth, hard, and he stumbles backward again, his ass meeting the ground this time.
“Fuck,” he grunts. He doesn’t get up. He spits out blood. Glaring at me like I’m picking on a guy when he’s down. How unfair.
“What’d I say?” I glare. “Don’t mess with my fucking sister. You want to fight someone, I’m right here. Stand the fuck up.” I motion to him.
He stays seated. His forearms on his bent knees.
Yeah. That’s what I fucking thought. All these petulant little pricks are the same. They always go after the girls because they know they’re physically stronger than them and want a guaranteed win without injury or harm.
I watch his eyes veer again, and I rotate slightly to see Phoebe emerge from inside the house. She leans a shoulder in the doorway to the patio. Her lips stretching higher and higher at Trent’s disgrace.
I tower over Trent, and he’s rethinking what he wants to say to my wife because his eyes drop to my foot.
“Wow, TK.” Phoebe feigns surprise. “Is it true? Are you really, like, losing billions of dollars in one day? Does this make you…broke? Like, do you have money to pay your mortgage—oh wait, do you even have a mortgage? Are you…are you homeless?” She gasps, a hand to her mouth, which she turns into a middle finger.
I grind down a smile. Phoebe grins at me, which makes it harder not to share in this sweet, sweet victory.
Trent’s face flames bright red in humiliation, in hatred. “You think you’re better than me…Phoebe?” He says her name with a mocking high pitch. I know where this is going.