Chapter 7
SEVEN
MASE
It’s been weeks since I saw her and felt her in my arms, but I can’t think of anything else. I’m barely functioning. The number of times I’ve considered asking Owen to track her down is ridiculous, and I’ve given myself a constant barrage of reasons why that is not a good idea.
The top one being all hell has broken loose lately; my four best friends’ lives are as hectic as my own.
When I asked Reed to travel with me to my father’s office to listen to his will being read, I expected him to accompany me with no issue.
What I didn’t expect was a tirade of poor excuses and to ultimately be left with no lawyer when there’re three of my father’s best legal team staring me down like I have no right to be here.
I have every fucking right!
This company was funded on my mother’s dime. My dead mother, to be precise. The same mother who barely reached thirty-three years old before she was killed in a car accident while trying to leave her abusive husband, with seven-year-old me in the back seat witnessing the horrors of it all.
“You don’t have legal representation?” Gareth Barnes goads. He was my father’s favorite attorney, the one who gets him out of the assault-and-battery charges of the women he falls into bed with.
I glare down the scumbag and sit forward, forcing the piece of trash to slink back into his seat away from me.
“I don’t need representation. This is simply a reading of his Last Will and Testament.” The darkness in my tone is full of feigned confidence.
His thick, caterpillar-like eyebrows rise, and he shoves his glasses up his nose as he fidgets from side to side.
Reed reassured me my mother made sure there were no loopholes in the legalities of the business—her father had insisted on it before my parents’ marriage.
Every cent of the financial business should belong to me now, along with the relevant shares, but something tells me my father won’t have made it that easy for me.
He hated me almost as much as I hated him.
When I left and never returned, I didn’t just walk out on him as a parent, I walked out on the business, and in his eyes, it was the ultimate betrayal.
Oliver clears his throat. He’s a decent enough man and knew my mother when she was alive. Shame he didn’t help her when she needed it. I might have actually liked him if he had.
“This is all standard, Mason. You’re already aware of your father’s Last Will and Testament.
Here’s your copy.” He slides the paperwork over to me, and I don’t even spare them a glance.
Had it not been for my mother’s money being invested in this business, I would burn it to the ground with a smile on my face, and the hatred rolling off these men in waves tells me they know it.
“Anything else?” I can’t wait to get the fuck out of here.
Oliver shifts in his chair. “Actually, there is one clause he was able to ascertain.”
“Of course there is,” I grit out through clenched teeth, wishing Reed had drowned in the damn lake he went to with his newfound family. Leaving me here exposed to these damn vultures has irritation thrumming through my veins.
Since the moment he rediscovered his one-night stand is pregnant with his child, the man has done everything in his power to ensure his place in her already made family.
The issue with that comes when he’s deceiving her, working with her father behind her back to take control of the shares she owns within her father’s business.
Still, he’s my fucking attorney, which our company pays him well for, so he should’ve been here.
Even Shaw offered to accompany me, mainly to get out of a scheduled family meal he has to attend at his brother-in-law’s estate.
Unfortunately for him, his wife is a Mafia princess and her brother is the Capo of the Mafia.
He holds Shaw’s balls in a firm vise so fucking tight it’s a wonder he can still get an erection, let alone have kids.
Lucky bastard might have it tough, but in my eyes, he has it all—a family. Something I can’t see happening for me anytime in the future despite how much I wish for it.
“It’s nothing to worry about, just a small clause to protect an asset.”
My spine bolts straight, and my forehead creases as I lean forward with intrigue. “What asset?”
Just what the fuck has my father gotten himself into? Correction, what the hell has he gotten me into?
Oliver chuckles awkwardly, then raises his hand. “Nothing to worry about. Don’t worry,” he says as if hearing my inner thoughts. “He has insisted on you becoming guardian of your sister until she finishes school, then all this”—he taps the sheets in front of me—“will be yours.”
I rear back, stunned.
What fucking sister?
Guardian?
He’s moved the fucking goal posts is what he’s done.
“Your stepsister,” Gareth offers, and I only now realize I spoke aloud.
I shake my head, my mind whirling. “What the fuck?” Fury strikes through me, and I want nothing more than to launch my chair through the office window. Instead, I practice the same techniques I have on Tara all these years, breathing in through my nose and out my mouth in small, sharp bursts.
“She gets impeccable grades,” Gareth tacks on with a snakelike smile, making him appear deranged. The sight causes something to twist inside me.
“He left me a kid?” I blurt out bitterly.
“Only until she finishes school,” Oliver offers, as if it makes everything better. It doesn’t. It absolutely doesn’t.
“She won’t be any trouble.” All three nod in unison, and it’s only now I acknowledge the third man in the room, Lenard Strong, chief executive of the company.
I sneer in his direction; the man is a weasel.
He’s probably trying to keep me on his side so I don’t sell up. No chance of that now, not yet anyway.
“You could get her a nanny?” he suggests. “Someone to watch over her while you go back to New Jersey.” He smiles, then looks toward Gareth, whose eyes dance with glee. They’re enjoying this.
A sharp pain hits my chest when the enormity of my situation sinks in.
I now have a child to take care of, and I live in fucking New Jersey.
We’re in Los Angeles. Shit, the poor kid’s world is about to be turned upside down.
Surely, she has her own family, right? “Where’s the mother?
” I ask Gareth, and he shakes his head solemnly.
“Her biological father?” I ask Oliver. He shakes his head.
Great, the kid’s practically an orphan, which means she’ll have issues I don’t have time for.
“Her family?” I ask Lenard with hope, but of course the fucker shakes his head grimly, like someone killed his latest mistress.
“Your father kept custody of her when her mother died,” Oliver adds.
Part of me resents this kid already, the unwelcome responsibility being forced on me and creating a stumbling block in my quest to regain control of my mother’s assets and reinvent her legacy. But to be left with my father as her only parent, how fucking shit her life must have been.
A heavy ball of responsibility to be better for her sinks to the bottom of my stomach. This was meant to be a quick visit, to retrieve access to my mom’s legacy and move on, not be lumbered with what is bound to be a traumatized child.
“Here are her files pertaining to her welfare. Her name is Summer Campbell.” Of course he married her mother, another wife.
Oliver pulls a manila folder out of his briefcase and slides it across the table toward me with a guilty expression.
My heart pounds against my rib cage with the weight of the responsibility.
A fucking kid.
I drag a hand over my head.
My mind whirls, thinking about how I can shirk this responsibility. Maybe she can go to a similar boarding school I went to. That would solve things. For now, she’s going to have to have a nanny. I’ll speak to my father’s butler, Hugh, first, then ask the guys for advice.
“Here’re the keys to the property. You know the access codes to all the others,” Oliver drones on while I’m left stunned, almost too overwhelmed to take it all in.
“I’ll touch base with you next week.” I nod and scoop up the files along with my phone and keys, then head toward the door, ignoring the shared looks of concern.
“Mase?” Reluctantly giving Oliver my attention, I lock eyes with him. “This might be the best thing to ever happen to you.” He looks at me with hope in his eyes, and a knot gathers in my throat.
“Doubtful,” I respond.
The only time I ever came close to feeling that way was when I had her in my arms, and she walked away from me. Because you paid her, you idiot. You were a transaction, nothing more.
I chastise myself for the hundredth time.
She came in the form of an innocent blonde girl, too pure to taint with my demons.