Chapter 2
TWO
Bishop
Present Day
Please give me the chance to apologize.
I fire off the text message to Aspen before I tuck my phone back into my pocket and sit down at the massive conference table.
She’s ignored my first few texts since I returned to town.
I had to leave abruptly after Levi’s recovery, and we never got a chance to talk.
I’m desperate for a chance to clear the air with her, but she’s barely glanced my way.
Avoiding me at every family gathering I’ve been invited to in the last couple of weeks, dodging me in the halls of the Avarice as we all work to get Seven Sins ready for its grand reopening, and once, quite literally jumping on the back of her horse on the ranch and riding off like I was invisible to her.
“Thank you for coming here today. We’ll be reading the will, and I’ll be explaining the different assets and how they’ve been assigned.
As the executor, your grandmother has asked me to explain all the legalese for you.
” The lawyer rattles off introductory remarks as I stare at the window.
There’s a view of the city sprawling out toward the mountains, like it’s trying to crawl its way to the foothills and losing a bit of itself along the way to the vortex of the city.
The blaring sound of honking cars and the bustle of the street below us drift through even the thickest glass, and bounce around the glass cage we’re encased in as he presents the last of my father’s legacy.
Grams is rapidly outliving her entire family.
Her husband and her son, several of her siblings, and god knows how many cousins, aunts, and uncles were all preceding her in death.
Luckily, or unluckily for her, she still has two grandchildren.
My estranged older half brother, born from an affair my father had in the early days of his broken marriage to my mom, and me, the runaway scum who sided with my mother in the divorce and lived with the Stocktons once she fell ill.
I glance across the table at Chase and back to Grams. There was no love lost between them.
Or between us, if we’re being honest. My Grams held all of us to high standards, and none of us lived up to them.
She seemed to find me vaguely more tolerable than Chase, why, though, is beyond me.
Whether it was sympathy for having to endure my father’s bullshit for years while Chase only had to survive a few rare holiday weekends, or that she just saw some of herself in me, I couldn’t say. Maybe both.
I just want the land I was promised. The ranch is defunct now, abandoned and overgrown.
The barns are collapsing, and the main house might need to be torn down.
They were as neglected as the rest of us.
But the property abuts the Stocktons’ ranch, and there are memories and heirlooms I still want to salvage there.
But as the lawyer reads the will, I see it all fading away.
There’s very little in the way of money or assets to be distributed beyond the ranch, and most of them have been seized or sold off to pay for his end-of-life care.
A pocket watch that belonged to my great-grandfather goes to Chase, and a bowie knife from another ancient relative is assigned to me.
But everything of value is gone. Panic wells in my gut as he drones on about the distribution of the small sum left in the bank account.
What if the ranch was seized to pay unpaid debts too?
Tax bills rarely made it to his desk, and it was even rarer to see one leave with a check attached.
He couldn’t have been that fucking reckless, could he?
For all of his faults, and the list is a mile long, he always believed that the ranch was a legacy.
Something he wanted to pass down in the family name from one generation to the next.
I can’t believe he’d jeopardize it. But then he spent so much time at the bottom of a bottle that it was hard to say what his values really were at the end of the day.
That depended on his mood and the day of the week.
“What about the ranch?” Chase must be having the same thoughts as I am.
“The ranch isn’t in the will,” the lawyer answers.
“Because it’s in mine,” Grams adds her two cents, her perfectly coifed beauty-shop curls barely swaying with her movement as she shifts in her chair.
“Yours?” Chase looks surprised. This would certainly lessen his chances of getting a piece of it.
“Mine.” She side-eyes him before she glances over at me and then beyond us to the expanse of the view beyond the glass.
“I took possession of the ranch about ten years ago when your father was going through a rough patch. I didn’t want to see it squandered, and he needed the money.
So, it’s mine now, and it’ll be left in my will when I pass. ”
“And who do you plan to leave it to?” Chase presses his luck.
“Didn’t I say this was all they’d care about?” She looks at the lawyer and shakes her head in disappointment. I haven’t said a word, but she’s not wrong. “I’m leaving it to a distant cousin. They would be the next in line, and they have children to pass the land onto already.”
My heart drops to my stomach. Chase’s face contorts with the information.
“So you’re giving it to them because they have children?” I’m trying to clarify the point.
“Because they have families. It was your grandfather’s wish that it stay in the family.
We’d hoped that meant one of you, but since neither of you is married or has children…
” She shrugs. “Well, here we are. I know this probably hurts your feelings, and I hope you know that, despite whatever water there’s been under the bridge between all of us, I still love you.
I’m not doing this to hurt you. It was a difficult decision, but I’m certain it’s the one your grandfather would have made. ”
“And if we had children?” I pose the hypothetical.
“If you had families, then I would pass it on to one of you. But you don’t, do you?” She pauses to let us answer, and when we both stay silent, she continues on, “And given that you’re both well into your thirties and confirmed bachelors, I don’t see that happening.”
“But if it did?” Chase sees the same opening I do.
“If it did, then I would reconsider. But this isn’t only about children.
Your father had children. He didn’t have a family—or at least not one he managed to keep together or treat like family.
This is a family ranch. It’s meant to be a place where we gather for the holidays and raise our kids.
A place where we made memories and a home where anyone in this family could always return to.
Not just a scrap of dirt to be bought and sold and borrowed against.”
“Is that what our father did?” I ask, morbid curiosity getting the better of me.
“Borrow against it?” I stopped speaking with him years ago, and my contact with my grandmother was limited while he was alive.
She didn’t like to pick sides. He was wrong for what he did.
She knew it. But he was her son, and she reasoned his father hadn’t been much better to him.
The best she could do was try to treat everyone equally—with mercy and forgiveness, whatever their sins.
I suppose if I were in his position, I’d be grateful. In mine, I’m cynical.
“Yes. I had to use a considerable amount of my savings to dig it out of the hole he put it in. Those savings were mine and Grandpa’s blood, sweat, and tears.
Seeing it wasted.” There’s a sharp breath before she blows it out, and the shake of her head punctuates the thought.
“I won’t let it happen again. The cousin it’s been willed to is responsible and invested.
He has three children, and every one of them is excited about the possibilities for the ranch. ”
“And what about us?”
“I plan to leave you whatever money I have left over. Split equally.”
“What if we manage to have a family before you—” Chase pauses to find a better word for her death, and her mouth quivers with amusement that he’s trying to censor himself. It’s not an easy feat. “Before you go?”
“If you have a family before I go, I’d consider rethinking the will.”
“Truly?” I ask.
“It’d have to be the real deal. Not just you racing to knock some poor woman up right now because you want the land. But yes.” She nods. “I told you. I’m not trying to hurt you boys or be unfair. I’m merely trying to do right by the family name.”
Chase looks at me, and I see the challenge glimmer in his eye. The man is going to be married to whoever he’s fucking right now before the year is out. At least if he gets his way.
I, on the other hand, have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting married. There’s only one woman I’d consider, and she won’t even answer my texts, let alone say vows that chain her to me for a lifetime.