54. Tarragon – Meaning Horror Permanence Shocking occurrence
54
TARRAGON
(DRAGON HERB, FUZZY WEED, GREEN DRAGON, KING OF HERBS, SNAKEFOOT)
MEANING: HORROR; PERMANENCE; SHOCKING OCCURRENCE
OCEAN
________
“ I love your house, Iz,” Trinity said. “And god knows I love your parent’s estate, but this is nice .”
We sat on the back terrace behind the house, lounging in the afternoon breeze. The umbrella over the table wasn’t doing that much good, but I savored the bit of shade. Especially since I was wearing a light cardigan. I would take it off soon, but I wanted to reveal my bite when we were comfortable and not in the doorway.
Isolde laughed and rolled her eyes. Her own bites were on display with her strapless top. Four of them. Her Beta had her bite on his neck. They were gently faded now, and you wouldn’t immediately see them if you weren’t looking.
My skin was darker. Would Cameron’s bite be paler when it healed? Right now it was still obvious, and I didn’t mind one fucking bit.
“So have you recovered? You dropped off the planet for a bit there. Jetlag must have been a bitch.” Trinity raised her glass.
“You could say I’m recovered, yeah.”
In my chest, my husband’s emotions hovered gently. All three of them felt like they were concentrating in different ways. The fact that I could feel them all was simply my favorite thing.
“Why do I feel like that’s leading to a story?”
I sipped my drink. Marcella made us some of the best margaritas I’d ever had. This one was strawberry, but I wanted to taste the watermelon one she’d offered. “Because it is.” Clearing my throat, I told them about Frank and what had happened.
Trinity grabbed her phone. “I can still ruin his ass, O. Let me at him.”
“Pretty sure my husbands are already on it, but that’s not the real story.”
“ That’s not the real story?”
I shook my head and pulled the cardigan away from my bite. Their gazes fell to my neck, and they both went still.
“Wait,” Isolde said. “Really?”
“Really. They’re mine. Scent matched. That night at the gala they saw me and wanted to approach me, and when they did… they scented me.” I couldn’t stop my smile. “They invented the marriage in order to get close to me.”
Both my friend’s mouths hung open, staring at me.
“Please say something.”
“Oh my god, congratulations !” Isolde was out of her chair and hugging me, laughing. “I can’t believe it.”
“Me either,” I said honestly.
It still hadn’t fully sunk in that this was real and not some sort of desperate fever dream that I made up.
Trinity was still in her seat, and I caught the look on her face. Pain. Tears glossed her eyes, and she blinked them away before she stood and leaned over to hug me. “I’m so happy for you.”
“Are you okay?”
“What do you mean, I’m fine?”
Standing out of my chair, I continued to hug her. “It’s okay if you’re not, Rin.”
“I am so fucking happy for you,” she said. “Of anyone, you deserve this.”
The way she clung to me told me everything. She was happy for me. And sad, too. Because it wasn’t her. And now both of her best friends had packs while she was alone.
“You know that just because I’m bonded now doesn’t mean anything changes?”
She laughed and stepped away, swiping at her cheeks. “I know. And I’m holding you bitches to it.”
“ Oh ,” Isolde went to her purse slung on the back of her chair. “That reminds me, Rin. I have something for you. Courtesy of Rowan.”
She handed Trinity a small, square box, and the three of us burst into laughter. Isolde’s Alpha Rowan made candy. Well, he made cannabis treats, and some of them happened to be chocolate, though he made the regular, non-high kind too.
“Which kind are they?”
Isolde smirked. “Both. The fun ones are stamped with stars.”
“Noted. Thank you.” She looked at me and grabbed her glass. “Now, I’m toasting to you, O. Congratulations, and I’m looking forward to getting to know your guys better now that they’re not going anywhere. And,” she took a sip of her drink, “As the final single friend, I’m going to need more details about how this happened. All of it.”
I let my smile creep over my face. “Fine. But first, I need to tell you what happened in a temple in Grecia.”
“ What? ”
Laughing, I took a long drink. “You’re going to love this one.”
A couple hours and several drinks later, I waved to my friends as they were driven away by one of the DuPont drivers. I didn’t know all their names yet. I needed to learn them. Since this was my home now, they were also my staff.
“Have a good time?” Micah asked, snaking an arm around my waist.
I leaned back into him, loving how I could feel his enjoyment of touching me. That my scent was intoxicating to him. I was just tipsy enough that I wanted to lean back into him and just… be. “Yeah. We had a good time.”
“They’re happy?”
“Mhmm. I think it was a little harder for Rin, but I don’t blame her. She’s feeling a little left behind, and she already deals with enough of that. But she is happy for us. Be prepared. She’ll probably grill you when she sees you next.”
His purr rumbled against my back, soft laughter in my ear. “I think we can handle it.”
We closed the door, and he kept his arm around me. “Come with me.”
“Where are we going?”
“The kitchen. For food.”
I made a face. “I’m not that hungry.”
“Still.”
It was then that I caught the undercurrent of worry in his emotions, and the others felt the same. “Is everything okay?”
“Yes,” he said. When he took my hand and pulled me with him, he squeezed it. “Absolutely. But we need to talk to you about something.”
“Everyone in the world loves that fucking sentence.”
We were close enough to the kitchen that Cam burst out laughing. “Please keep the sass coming, sweetheart. I love it.”
“Seriously though.”
Everett patted the seat on the bench beside him. “Seriously. It’s a good thing.”
“Ooookay.” I sat, and he tucked his arm around me before placing a paper folder in front of me. “What’s this?”
“We have someone who…” Cameron shrugged. “We met him in college. His name is Aiden, and he works in what we’ll call a gray area as far as information. He helps us when we need him to, and because of everything happening with the company, we asked him to look into something about your uncle.”
I accepted the glass of water Micah handed me. “If you sat me down to tell me my uncle is involved in some shady shit, it’s not like I didn’t suspect that. It’s not a huge surprise.”
Everett pulled me in and kissed the side of my head. “No, I don’t imagine so. But Aiden went a step further on this one. We didn’t ask him to, but he found something you need to see.”
Well, that sounded a bit dire. I opened the folder and started to read. Wait… what?
These were the documents for my trust. But… they weren’t the ones I recognized. These said that I was meant to get everything when I turned twenty-one. The trust made provision for my aunt and uncle in a small way, as a thank you for being my guardians, but nothing more.
And there weren’t any restrictions listed. None of the money-managing bullshit I’d been dealing with. No qualifications for receiving it. Just turning twenty-one. Nerves lodged in the pit of my stomach. “Is this some kind of joke? Because if it is, it’s not funny.”
Micah took a slow breath and let it out. None of our bonds had any trace of joking, or even levity. “It’s not a joke, princess.”
I stared at the pages in front of me and read them again. And a third time. “I don’t understand.”
“We believe this is the real trust that your parents signed.” Everett flipped to the last page and showed me the familiar signatures. They were my parents’ signatures. I’d seen my trust paperwork more than once over the years, and I knew the signatures like the back of my hand. “Do you remember the first time you saw your trust?”
“No. I remember seeing it, but not exactly when. Everything was a bit of a whirlwind after mom died. All I knew for a while was that Frank and Laura were taking care of me. By the time I was in high school and starting to think about college, that’s when I actually started asking questions. I didn’t know any better.”
Cameron reached across the table and captured my hand. “Of course not.”
I shook my head. “How is this possible? Or legal? They changed it?”
“Possible?” Everett asked. “Aiden is diving deeper into that for us. Our best guess is that after everything was resolved with your mother’s will, all the legal documents were handed over from her lawyer to Frank’s. With you being so young, he fabricated the new papers, though we’re still wondering about the signatures, since they match. As for it being legal? Absolutely fucking not.”
“I just—” I slumped back in my seat and leaned on Everett. “If this is real, then…”
I couldn’t even verbalize the primal rage that hovered on the edges of my consciousness. If it was true, then the last nine years were for nothing. All their control and the struggle to get Entendre off the ground when I had to beg them to allow me the money to get started. They barely gave me enough seed money to even buy the first round of flowers. But I’d been desperate enough to make it work, and so I’d made it work.
Every single painful comment and attack, all while they were living off money that was mine. And relishing it.
Keeping my breathing even, I closed the folder. “These aren’t the originals. They won’t do anything to fix it.”
“No,” Everett admitted. “But we’re working on that.”
I let my face drop into my hands. “Even Frank isn’t foolish enough to keep copies of documents he’s intentionally trying to bury.”
Cameron smirked. “You’re right. But we won’t get them from him. Our best chance is if your mother’s lawyer, or their firm, still has original copies. With clients like the Caldwells, I’m sure they keep everything they have. Your parents still have charitable foundations that are sustained and run, right?”
They did. And those wouldn’t have been handed over to a new lawyer. Even when I was small and curious, Mom told me that they made sure to keep themselves out of it. To make sure no one had any questions about what was happening with the money. I hadn’t understood what she meant, but now I did.
“If we can prove it, what do we do?”
“Well.” The three of them were smiling, and Everett placed a different folder in front of me. “We didn’t get a chance to tell you everything that happened, because we were a little busy wi?—”
“Fucking you,” Cameron said. “We were busy fucking you.”
I sensed nothing but pride and pleasure from his place in my chest, followed by his thoughts spiraling somewhere dirty. “Cam.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure you don’t.” Beneath the table, I nudged his leg with my foot. Which backfired when he caught my ankle and held it captive.
Micah leaned on the table, suppressing his laughter. “ Anyway . There’s more to tell you about Frank and why the toys broke, all of it.”
And they did. Every little detail of what had transpired. The things that led to our marriage, and the things our marriage had encouraged and allowed, as well as their theories about why Frank was suddenly desperate and making bolder moves than he had before.
When they finished, I downed the last of my water and stretched. “What a mess.”
“More like a nest of snakes,” Micah muttered.
“So what do we do?”
On the table, Everett wove our fingers together and held my hand. “ You don’t have to do anything, wife. Aiden is looking, as are our lawyers. But we’re planning on taking everything they have from them, getting you your money so you can do whatever the hell you want with the Caldwell Estate and your inheritance, and leaving them all behind in the dust.”
“That sounds nice.” Not just getting what my parents wanted me to have, but being taken care of. Not having to take on the heavy burden of figuring it all out. I didn’t have to do anything. I simply had to let them help me.
Cam rose and held out a hand to me. “There is one thing you can do though, if you want?”
He spun me under his arm before pulling me back. “Once everything is settled, we need to deliver this news all at once, so neither Joseph nor Frank has a chance to defend themselves or do any more lasting damage to either you or the company. So, we’re going to call Geneva tomorrow.” His grin was wicked. “Feel like designing some flowers for a party?”