Fifty-Six
NO ONE MOVES.
My pulse pounds, my blood rushing in my veins. In my cheeks, my fingertips, my chest, my heart rate is relentless. It isn’t frightening or uncomfortable. I’m not the intimidated girl or the mollified heiress the people in the room expect.
I feel good. I feel in control.
At every turn today, I’ve run into people with their own agendas, who have tried to get in the way of mine. They haven’t, though. Each of them has only given me pieces of what I need now. My final move.
“I don’t want thousands from you,” I inform Dash. “I’ll be keeping the millions we stole.”
He barks a laugh. “You will not. I’m the one in charge here.”
I listen close, reveling in the familiar confidence in his voice. I’ve known wealth. I’ve known indulgence. Nothing compares to the anticipation of putting him in his place. While I’m not doing it for enjoyment, I will very much enjoy what comes next.
“What you haven’t realized yet is,” I say, “I’m not the next chapter in your legacy. I’m the end of it.”
I don’t know what does it. What unnatural calm in my voice, what cold menace in my words, what dark gleam in my glare changes everything. Whatever it is, Dash goes still. Something in the way he looks at me shifts. It takes me a moment to figure out what’s different. Then I realize—he’s afraid.
For the first time in my life, he knows I’m capable. I’m his equal.
“You don’t know what you are. You’re just a kid,” he mutters, dropping onto the couch as if he’s confident.
He’s not, though. He’s covering his fear. Performing. I would know dishonesty on my father anywhere, grimy fingerprints left on my heart forever. He’s lying.
I’m not.
I reach for the documents scattered on the floor and lift the one I need. “I’ve learned a lot about you today, Dad,” I say, walking his fate closer to him, conscious of Abigail, our silent witness. “I learned you spent a lot of money to hide your illegitimate daughter from your wife. Were you more upset about the end of your marriage or that I turned all that hush money into a failed investment?”
“You should be grateful for what I did,” he fires back, red splotches spreading on his cheeks. “Who knows what your life would look like right now if I hadn’t?”
Abigail fidgets behind him, no doubt hearing the dark echo of her own words to me. I know what she’s feeling, know what it’s like to see yourself in Dash in the worst possible light. To be repulsed by the similarities but unable to escape them.
“Oh, I know how it would look,” I reply. “I’m living that life right now. In a two-bedroom house with a mom who loves me. Burdened with medical debts and car-insurance payments we can’t afford. Happy without you.”
Dash snarls. “If you’re so happy, then go back to your real home.”
I match his snarl with a smile. “I will. First,” I say grandly, “I’m taking what’s mine.” I glance down at the document in my hand, borrowing some of Tom’s theatricality. “You didn’t have the cash for the hush money, so you borrowed it, right? From your friends. People like Allen Chang.”
“How did you—?” he begins, desperation bright in his voice.
I cut him off. “But then it only got worse. You wanted to follow in your great father’s footsteps. Be the worthy next chapter of the Owens legacy,” I say, pronouncing the words so he hears my own dark echo. “So you started your own media corporations. Vanity projects and podcasts that required yet more money to appear successful. But you were spending more than you were bringing in, and so you started selling off Grandpa’s companies to try to cover it. It wasn’t enough. You needed cash. And what better place to look than the Owens legacy itself?” I pause before I slot the final puzzle piece into the tableau it’s taken me hours to construct. “The family trust.”
Dash, for once, is silent. He watches me like prey watches its predator, like if he just makes himself small enough, I won’t go in for the kill.
“I talked to Mia,” I go on flatly. “Apparently, the trust has run dry. Only, it hasn’t, has it?”
I drop the trust bank statement on his lap. He makes no move to read it. He doesn’t have to. Dashiell Owens, executor of Andrew Owens’s estate, knows that there are still ten figures’ worth of money in his father’s trust. He knows that every year, he is supposed to responsibly invest a certain amount, donate a certain amount to charity, and, of course, send each of his siblings a check.
Except, according to Mia, those checks have stopped coming.
Accusation turns my tone. “Grandpa didn’t invest in burying his indiscretions. He invested in what lasted. In futures.” I let my eyes drift to my sister, hoping she knows what Dash did was wrong—that she has family who wouldn’t rather hide her away. “The trust is fine. You’ve just been lying to your siblings. Because you’re stealing their shares.”
Finally, Dash stands, defense mechanisms kicking to life. His jaw is tight, his gaze tighter. “You have no idea what you’re speaking about,” he snaps.
My father is taller than me. He wants to use that on me. To intimidate.
But tonight, I’m in heels.
My gaze is level with his, and I don’t blink. “I don’t? So if I take these statements down to any of the cousins here tonight, it won’t start a war within the family?” I press my question to him like the point of a sword.
“They would destroy you along with me. Please be smart enough to see that,” Dash parries, patronizing.
I grin, knowing he’s given me the confirmation I needed. My voice is low when I continue, weighted down by the years of hurt and rejection he’s left me. “You already did their job for them. If you’d never kicked me out, maybe I’d stand with you now. But I have nothing they can take.”
My father isn’t proud of me now. He’s furious. Empires crumble in his eyes. I won’t be welcomed back home, won’t be given the keys to his castle. I won’t be his heiress.
I don’t care. I’ve bested him.
My sister watches me. She doesn’t look hurt anymore. She looks avenged.
I face my father for a final time. “Abigail and I are going to leave this wedding with the money we stole from you,” I order. “I’m aware it cleans out your cash. Maybe Allen will give you another loan, or you can steal more from your dead father.” I shrug, unbothered. His debts won’t be mine when he removes my name from his will. “As long as my crew and I aren’t arrested for this, your family never has to know you’re stealing from them, and no one has to know you were bested by the two daughters you cast out.”
I notice my sister straighten, surprised to be included. Even touched.
Dashiell Owens watches me for long moments, drink in hand. I hold his gaze, understanding innately that I’m staring right into him, into his rotten heart. The mogul whose fortune is stolen. The host whose friends hate him. The son whose hunger for his father’s image has destroyed him.
He knows I know everything. His features warp with wrath. “Get. Out,” he orders.
“Happily,” I reply. “This isn’t my house anyway.”
I pick up and fold the accounting statement neatly, creasing the center of the page like I’m choking the life out of the document.
“Do you honestly think you can deceive the family forever?” I can’t help asking him. His machinations are risky, even for a man who regularly combines crafty and careless in one move.
He squares his shoulders in petty defensiveness. “Look around you, Olivia,” he snaps. “Money isn’t about forever. It’s about right now. Forever is an afterthought. I needed more,” he emphasizes contemptuously, “so I took it.”
I say nothing, loathing the echo of my motives in his words. Why earn when you could deceive? Why inherit when you could rob? Clinging the paper—my security—and then picking up my clutch from the floor, I join Abigail at the door. She comes closer to me, and decisively, I reach for the knob.
I’m leaving when I hear my father laugh.
Not the showy sound I heard with his groomsmen. No—he’s not mocking me. I wish he were. I could easily roll my eyes and forget the insult. Instead, I round, foreboding fixing me in place.
Dash stares into his drink, his demeanor changed. In defeat, amusement has found him.
“Olivia,” he pronounces. “You think you aren’t part of this family, but can’t you see? You are my legacy.”
He pauses, knowing I’m curiosity’s captive. I don’t want to hear what he’s concluded, yet I wait.
“Like father, like daughter,” he chides. “Heiress to an empire of thieves.”
His words chill me, shards of silver in my veins. My father glances up, expectant. Waiting for the reward of my retort.
While he may have given me everything, I give him nothing. I shut the door on him, and we leave.