Devlin (House of Frazier #6)

Chapter 1

Howard’s funeral was a lot smaller than Sen thought it would have been for a man as wealthy as he’d been anyway.

Since he’d not premade his arrangements, she was able to not just pick the venue for it but the calling hours as well.

She decided that just one day of calling hours and the funeral the next day at the cemetery where his parents had been buried would be sufficient.

It took her three days before the event to get in touch with his children from the previous marriage.

They wanted nothing to do with him, nor his money, it seemed.

“Have you made sure that he’s dead? He can pull all kinds of tricks when he doesn’t get what he wants.

” She said that they’d performed an autopsy on him and that he was very dead.

“Good. My sisters and I won’t come to the funeral.

But we will require a copy of his death certificate.

I can get those if you have better things to do with your time. ”

“I’ll make sure you get them.” After finding out how many he was going to need, he said that they’d taken out insurance policies on him when his mother had divorced him so that they could benefit from his death.

“I only got to know his true self towards the end of his life. I’m assuming that’s why you don’t want to have anything to do with him. ”

Her biological father had died of a massive coronary event in the hospital where he’d been being treated for an ulcer that was eating away at his stomach.

He blamed his being sick on her since he’d had to be so nice to her before her mother was out of the picture.

As it was then, he’d shown his true colors by demanding that she do what he said, and there was no consoling him about it either.

The man had turned out to be a bully and a tyrant to her, and she didn’t much care for him.

He’d made her cry when he told her that she was going to be taken out of his will if she didn’t do what he said.

She told him that she wanted nothing to do with his money and was fine without him in her life.

That, of course, didn’t go over that well, and he had a heart attack because his anger had gotten the best of him.

He died, an angry old man without anyone around who wanted to have anything to do with him, just like the funeral.

No one came, but a few associates, and that was only to make sure that he was dead, she thought.

He ended up not being able to do anything about his will, if that was really his plan, and she was going to hear it being read to her the day after tomorrow.

Not that she cared because she was sure there were a lot of loops she was going to have to do in order to get his money.

Not that she needed it. She had plenty enough of her own money that her uncle and aunt had left her when they were both killed in an automobile accident just weeks before she’d met Ivan Frazier, the love of her life.

“I hope you get what you can out of the estate. But none of us wanted anything to do with him while he was alive, and we’re happy to not contest the will just so he’s not part of our lives anymore than he had to be.

” She told Howard Jr. that she was sorry.

“It’s not your fault. He wasn’t a good father to any of us, so I’m doubting that he was to you either.

If you don’t mind, please don’t contact us again about him.

As I said, we wanted nothing to do with him other than the policies that we had on his life. We’ll do well on those.”

“I’m glad that you have something that you can make from his death.

I don’t care about the money, but since he named me in the will, I’m going to go and see what he thinks I’m going to do about it now that he’s gone.

” He told her good luck, and he hung up.

It hurt her heart that she’d thought so kindly about Howard when he’d been alive, only to find out that he was as bad a monster as her mother was.

Now here she was at the cemetery for his graveside service with only the Frazier family there to be with her. As soon as he was interred, she wasn’t going to think about him again until the reading of the will. Which would be the day after tomorrow morning at the courthouse.

Devlin was going to go with her to the reading of the will.

He was Ivan’s brother and a good friend too.

He’d been her attorney when she’d been trying to keep her mother from killing her over the money that Uncle Robert had left her, and he’d done well.

Her mom was in jail for the next ten years for having a gun on her when she was an ex-convict.

She’d bought it so that she could kill her first, then Ivan, when they wouldn’t turn over the billions of dollars that she’d been left when Sen’s aunt and uncle had been in a horrific car accident that nearly decapitated her aunt.

Uncle Robert had had a massive stroke that killed him while he was driving and caused the accident that took both their lives.

She had no idea that they’d been so wealthy—they’d left her billions of dollars along with an estate worth so much more—when they’d died and left it all but ten grand to her.

Her mother had gotten the ten grand as an appeasement.

It didn’t work out the way that they had wanted, so her mother had gotten a gun to kill her and Ivan with when they wouldn’t turn things over to her.

Sen thought that her life was all up in the air about a lot of things and just wanted things to be normal.

Whatever normal meant to her. She was handed a note from the funeral director as soon as the service was over.

“I’m not sure how she got in touch with you, but I’m not going to call her back.

” He said that she’d called his office no less than ten times in the last two days.

“Call the police station and tell them that you don’t want to hear from her again.

That’s what I had to do. She’ll be off to prison in a few days, so that’ll be the end of her calling you, I hope. ”

“She said that if you didn’t get the message and call her, she was going to add us to the list of people that she has to kill as soon as she gets out of jail.

She seems to think that she’ll be getting out soon.

” She assured him that she was going to prison soon and that would be the end of her for the next ten years.

“I should hope so. To be threatened like we were isn’t anything that we’re used to.

If you see her, please tell her that you got the note about calling her. ”

“I will if I see her.” She wasn’t going to see her mother either unless it was to identify her body when she was dead. And even then, she wasn’t so sure she’d be happy about having to do that either.

Putting it in her purse along with the other notes she’d gotten from people around town, she was going to shred them as soon as she got home.

It gave her such satisfaction to do that.

Her mother meant nothing to her, and she was going to tell her that again when she saw her. If she ever saw her again.

There was food at Lica’s house when the funeral was over.

There didn’t seem to be anyone else coming over but family, so she was happy for that.

She was starving, and almost as soon as she was at Lica’s home, she was filling up her plate with whatever struck her fancy.

She was sitting in the living room when Ivan joined her. He had a full plate as well.

“I don’t know about you, but I’ll be glad when this is all over.” She told him just one more thing, and it would be. “Do you suppose he’s not just going to leave you the money and make you do something that you don’t want? What will you do then?”

“I’ve thought about it a great deal, and I will only do what I think is right.

I have no idea how big his company is, but I’m assuming that it’s quite large.

” He’d been selling high-end furniture around the world for decades, and it had netted him a great deal of money.

“But I can walk away from it if he’s going to be as demanding as he was those last few days.

I’m strong now that I have you in my life, and I’m not going to do what I don’t think is right. ”

“Good for you. I’ll be there with you. Thank you for scheduling it on a Thursday so that I could be there.

Not that I wouldn’t have been anyway, but this way I don’t have to close up the clinic for it.

” Ivan was a vet of good standing, and since they’d asked her when she wanted to have the will read, it was easy for her to pick the day that the clinic was closed so that Devlin and Ivan could be there with her.

“After this is all over and your mom is in prison, how about the two of us take a nice long trip that has nothing to do with parents? That way, we can have some fun and not have to look over our shoulders all the time. I can close up the clinic for two weeks, given enough time to get the patients taken care of.”

“I’d love that. Just the two of us.” He told her, of course, and asked her where she wanted to go. “I don’t care so long as I have to use my passport. I have one from when I was sent away to school when I was younger.”

“Sounds good. I’ll have to get with someone on how to make that happen and get me a passport of my own.

I can’t wait.” She said that she had something to look forward to now and was happy that the two of them were going to be able to do it.

“I am as well. We’ll see the world one place at a time, just the two of us. ”