Chapter 20
The very last thing I was going to do was buy a fucking garden party dress today.
That breakfast was humiliating.
To make it worse, the majordomo of the house wouldn’t let me get up until I finished my plate. He watched me eat like he was scoring my posture and fork positions.
Judging by the scowl on his face, he disapproved of my table manners, which was ridiculous.
I had been brought up in the best prep schools. I had been taught proper etiquette and manners since I was a child. Lucian could have brought the King of England for dinner, and I would know the proper etiquette.
When I was finally allowed to leave the table, I stormed up to my room, or rather our room, and sat on the bed, trying to figure out what to do. I had two hours before my lawyer would be in for the day.
After the judge ruled against me, I’d tried to reach my lawyer, and again, several times over the next few days. His secretary had been blocking me. It seemed the only way I would be getting ahold of him was to march into his office and demand his attention.
That was my plan, but I had some time to kill first.
I activated my new card and researched conservatorships in the state of New York.
There was so much information, it was starting to make my head spin.
I dug some of the documents out of my purse, needing to reread them. I still couldn’t understand how he’d gotten away with this. Scanning through the paragraphs of indecipherable legalese, I looked for something that almost made sense.
Then I found it, right in front of me, in black and white.
It isthe court’s opinion that the sudden death of Ms. Stella Jane Deiderich’s family has left her grief-stricken and in a position where she cannot be trusted to maintain her family’s estates. All assets that would have been bequeathed to her by her parents are to be placed in a trust with Mr. Lucian Manwarring, Sr. In addition to managing her finances, Mr. Manwarring will also be appointed her power of attorney as well as her health care proxy. The list of duties appointed to Mr. Manwarring is as follows…
The list afterward was impressive.It systematically notated that the court had taken away every right I had.
Sure enough, in the middle of that list, it stated that Mr. Manwarring got to decide where I lived, if I went back to school, everything.
He had the right to void any contracts I signed without his approval, including but not limited to leases, employment contracts, and marriage licenses.
I’d give him this much: his lawyers and that judge may have been corrupt, vile men, but they were thorough.
I wasn’t allowed to do anything, at least not until I got back to my lawyer and made him face me and tell me how to fight this.
If Lucian Manwarring expected a docile little ward he could intimidate, threaten, and play with, a little mouse he could turn into a submissive and an obedient housewife, he had another thing coming.
I was still a Deiderich, and I would fight this.
As soon as my phone said it was 8:30 a.m., I had to go.
My lawyer began his day at 9:00, and I needed to be the first person he saw.
Getting out of the mansion was a little trickier than I had anticipated.
The English butler, whom I now referred to as Jeeves, at least in my head, seemed to be everywhere. I wasn’t sure if he was going to stop me from leaving again. Since his boss wasn’t here, maybe I was free to do as I wanted. No one had told me I wasn’t allowed to leave.
However, I knew that if he saw me go, he would immediately tell Lucian.
There shouldn’t have been a way he could track me, but on the off chance he had put something in my bag or had some other invasive way to track me, I didn’t want him to know ahead of time where I was going.
It took a fair bit of sneaking and going down a long hallway with my back pressed against the wall.
I even had to double back twice to avoid Jeeves or another maid who reported to him.
Finally, I got to the front door. Just as I gripped the handle, a nasally English voice came from behind me.
“Mr. Manwarring asked that I remind you there is an outing to attend at noon.”
Busted, but that didn’t mean I had to let him know he had won.
“I understand.”
“May I inquire as to where you are off to this morning?”
I turned and looked him in the eye as I pushed my shoulders back, a position of strength my father had taught me. “No.”
“Be back on time. Otherwise, the master of this house will be displeased.” He looked down his nose at me. “Maybe then he will take my suggestion and put you to work with the rest of the entry-level staff instead of giving you a free ride you do not deserve.”
“You don’t know what I do and do not deserve.”
“I know enough,” he said, turning on his overly polished heel and walking away.
A cold fire burned in my belly, fueled by rage and embarrassment. It didn’t slip my notice that even my anger was now cold.
Even when I tried to slam the door behind me, it simply glided shut with a very unsatisfying click.
This house was the worst.
I called an Uber, put in my new card info, and went straight to my lawyer’s office.
The ride wasn’t too bad, and I had even managed to calm myself down a bit. I had every intention of walking into that office and tearing him a new one, but I was at least calm enough that I could act like a well-mannered lady while doing it.
Logically, I knew a hysterical woman never got what she needed, only ridicule, and I needed the lawyer’s help. And for him not to send me a bill until whatever we were going to do was done.
When I stepped out of my car, I got an alert from my banking app informing me I had $163.00 left on my card. All of the poise and composure I had managed to find instantly evaporated.
“You have to get rid of him,” I said when I stormed into my lawyer’s office, his secretary trailing after me, telling me I couldn’t go in there.
My incompetent attorney was just taking a sip of his coffee when I came in, spilling it down his cheap, ill-fitting suit.
I hoped it burned.
It was a cruel-spirited thought, and I immediately regretted it.
Then he shot me a look of annoyance like I was a child who was running wild and interrupting his work instead of a paying client who needed his help.
Suddenly, I didn’t feel so bad.
This man was supposed to be on my side. He was the only help I had, and he saw me as a nuisance.
I didn’t understand it. My father had used this firm exclusively for nearly twenty years, so they stuck me with what I was hoping was a first-year associate nepotism baby.
I didn’t give a fuck who his uncle was. After the amount of business I gave this firm, how was I not treated better?
“Ms. Deiderich, did we have an appointment?”
“No, your secretary is refusing to schedule anything. Apparently, you are all booked, so I thought I would come down here and see if you could fit me in between meetings.” I made a show of looking around the empty room. “What do you know? It looks like you have time now.”
“Ms. Deiderich, please, this is not how things?—”
I held up my hand, cutting him off as I took a seat on the other side of his desk. “What he is doing cannot be legal. He is ruining my life.”
“There is nothing I can do,” he said, grabbing napkins from a drawer and dabbing at his shirt like it would do anything.
He gave up and hit the button on his phone, asking his secretary to get him a new shirt. The snotty bitch asked if he would also like her to get security.
“Do it, and I’ll bring my complaints to your boss’s boss, and then I will take out an ad in the Washington Post about this firm intentionally tanking cases. I will ruin this firm and your career. My father may be gone, but my name still carries weight.”
“No, security will not be needed,” he said before sitting back in his chair. “What are you expecting me to do here?”
“Your job?” I sounded bitchy, but it needed to be said. “You sat there and watched. You said nothing as they stole my money and treated me like a child.”
“What would you have me do?” he asked, standing. “No, really, what would you have me do? Manwarring owns half the judges in the city. His son married the DA’s sister. There is nothing this man can’t touch. If we drag it in front of another judge, the same thing is going to happen, but maybe this time, he will call you incompetent. Maybe this time, he says you need round-the-clock inpatient psychiatric help because you are unstable. He can have the court claim you are a risk to yourself. Do you really think he can’t buy a doctor as easily as he bought the judge? He will lock you up and throw away the key.”
“That isn’t fair.”
He scoffed. “Fair? Jesus, you are a child. Life isn’t fair. Boo-hoo, you have someone holding on to your assets for a few years. He can’t really do much with them. They are still yours. He just manages them for the next three years. So you have a trustee, so what?”
“So what?” I practically screeched. “So he had me kicked out of my hotel. He had my cards canceled, and he made me move into his home.”
“When you say he canceled your cards, do you mean he has taken all funds from you?” the lawyer asked, his eyebrow raised as if I had piqued his interest.
“Yes, well, kind of.”
“What do you mean, kind of?”
“He gave me a new card, but it has a limit. That is unacceptable.”
“The room he has you staying in? Does it have a solid roof?”
“Yes, but what does?—”
The lawyer raised his hand, cutting me off. “Does it have heat and a bed? Do you have access to running water?”
“Yes, of course, but that doesn’t mean?—”
“It means you have it better than most people in this city. No judge is going to take you out of Manwarring’s care because you have an allowance.” The way he rolled his eyes as he said ‘allowance’ made me grind my teeth.
“I understand that I am still very fortunate, but?—”
“But nothing. There is nothing I, or any other lawyer, can do for you.”
“There has to be a way out of this.”
The lawyer stared at his now empty coffee cup longingly for a moment, then focused on me.“Your best option is to just wait. You have only three years, or until you get married.”
Three years was too long. Lucian Manwarring was going to force me to marry him in less than one.
“I understand you believe that is my best option. I am asking what my other options are.”
“You have none unless Manwarring is somehow unfit?—”
“How do I prove he is unfit?”
The lawyer didn’t even bother hiding his disrespectful eye roll. He wouldn’t have done that to my father, and I was getting really tired of men not taking me seriously.
The lawyer held up his hand, spread his fingers, and counted off the ways.
“Mismanagement of funds, which, even if he did that, you don’t have the ability to prove. Failure to file the required tax documents, which, let’s be honest, is never going to happen, and even if it did, he could explain it away as an accounting error. No judge would fault him for that. The man doesn’t file his own taxes.”
“What else?” I demanded, ignoring the way the walls were slowly creeping across the floor, closing in on me and making it harder to breathe.
I focused on controlling my breath as subtly as possible while staring the lousy lawyer down. The last thing I needed to do was have a panic attack in this office. He would absolutely call 911 and have me rushed to the hospital just to get me out of his office.
“Or breach of fiduciary duty or conflict of interest. None of which would apply here.”
“What else?” I asked again, knowing there had to be something. The system was not set up to protect women, but there was always some loophole, some grey area, some loose string. I just had to be clever enough to find it, and brave enough to pull it off.
“There is nothing else unless he was physically abusing you, which clearly is not the case, or neglect, but you already admitted you were fed and housed. Unless he was somehow incapacitated or you got married…”
“Wait, if I got married, then I would get my money and property back?” Immediately, the plots of a thousand Lifetime movies scrolled through my head.
I had no interest in a husband or falling in love, but maybe I could pay a man to marry me, and then pay him to leave me alone, then divorce me when I was of age.
Maybe some handsome artist who needed time free from a job to create his art? Or maybe a Parisian baker with a sexy accent who wanted to intern in the amazing New York bakeries and just needed a green card.
“Yes, but to get married, you will need your trustee’s written permission.”
Well, there went those dreams.
It was probably for the best. No self-respecting Frenchman would come to the United States to learn how to bake. It just wouldn’t happen.
“Ok, you mentioned incapacitated. What does that mean exactly?”
“If he is in some way physically unable to do his duty as a trustee. If he were in some kind of accident or a medical issue arose, left him incapacitated. Though I should tell you. Manwarring did a full physical to prove that he was more than capable. The man is in perfect health. That avenue isn’t going to give you the options that you’re hoping.”
Incapacitated. Something about that struck a nerve.
The lawyers didn’t say he had to be sick or in an accident. He just had to be unable to perform his duties as a trustee.
Of course, the most common way that would happen would be if there was an illness or injury, but I didn’t think those were the only ways. I remembered reading something in the contract about being incapacitated, but I couldn’t remember what it was. It was just on the tip of my tongue.
“What other ways could he be incapacitated?” I asked.
“Look, there’s not a loophole here for you, and I don’t have time for this. Nothing short of prison is going to get you free of him.”
Prison, that was it.
My father did not speak about business in front of me or my mother often, but I had heard him say things.
He hated Lucian Manwarring, and my father did not hate without cause. He had said once in passing to someone at a party that it was a miracle that Lucian wasn’t in prison.
He had a reputation for making questionable deals and bending the law.
Amelia had mentioned once that Harrison wasn’t a fan of her father-in-law or really most of their class. He also had a reputation for wanting more and wanting to prove he wasn’t just another rich man playing at ruling the world.
Maybe he would see taking Lucian Manwarring down as a way to do that.
“So, just to be clear,” I said, standing and tucking my Kelly bag under my arm. “You are saying if he is in prison, then I get my life back.”
The lawyer eyed me warily.“Yes, but I don’t like where your train of thought is going.”
“Where my mind is, is no longer any of your concern. I will schedule an appointment with your secretary if I need anything further. Have a nice day.”
I practically ran from his office.
Lucian would be home soon, which meant I only had a few hours to find something and get it to the DA.