Chapter 42
Chapter
Forty-Two
“All right, I’m home, so how can I help?” Angelica set her phone on speaker, fired up her desktop computer and her iPad, and sat firmly in the chair at her desk. She didn’t plan on leaving this spot for the entire day. She had so much work to catch up on.
“Mom’s files are a mess,” Christian muttered with a sigh. “Like I can’t make heads nor tails of them. And Dad is useless.”
“He’s struggling with her being gone,” Angelica answered, squinting at the screen in front of her until she remembered to grab the reading glasses she usually stashed by the base of the computer. At least everything here was still perfectly in place and right where she left it.
“Yeah, but that leaves me to do absolutely everything.”
“It does.” Angelica licked her lips as she opened up the profit and loss statement from the last quarter. It was time to catch up on finances at least. “It shouldn’t be that way, but it is.”
Christian sighed again. “I’m not even sure where to begin.”
“You need to notify the bank and anything her name was on.” Angelica tapped away at her computer as she rattled off directions to her baby brother.
Though she really should stop thinking of him like that.
“So the car loan if they had one, or the DMV to get her name off the title. I’d suggest adding your name to the banks so that when Dad dies, you’ll have an easier time getting access to everything and you won’t have to go through this again. ”
“I don’t even want to think about that.”
“Well, you need to. He’s eighty-nine.” Angelica clicked the mouse and opened up a new file, skimming everything quickly. Now wasn’t the time for an in-depth review, and she trusted the people who were doing work for her to actually do their jobs correctly.
That had been her first major lesson when she’d taken on Hotel Bombshell. She needed to let go of control.
“Ange, I just lost one parent.”
“I know.” Angelica sighed. She really needed to be nicer about this.
She’d worked through her emotional reaction, mostly, and she needed to be here for her brother.
She could do that. At least, she told herself she could—and she’d told him.
“We can talk about that later, I guess. For Mom, you just need to get her name off things and either put it solely in Dad’s name or yours and Dad’s. ”
“He’s talking about planning his funeral already.”
So Christian did actually want to talk about that. Angelica pursed her lips, recentered herself, and then focused back on her computer screen.
“That’s good. Write down everything he says so that you two can go back over it when he wants to.
” Angelica opened her email next and her heart stopped.
There were so many. She’d worked her best to keep up with them as much as she could while gone, but it’d been next to impossible with the way the filming schedule had turned out.
Doubling the episodes per season might just be the death of her if she wasn’t careful.
“He wants you there when he dies.”
Angelica froze. “What? Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Did he say why?” Angelica asked. She hadn’t cut her father off, not like she’d cut her mother off, though he’d been a consequence of that action for her. Still, outside of filming two years ago, she hadn’t seen him in a very long time.
“You’re his daughter?”
“Why did that sound like a question?” Angelica bit her tongue hard.
She hadn’t meant for that to come out as harsh as it had.
“Sorry. I’ll think about it.” Though what would it really matter?
He’d be dead, and she’d be going for Christian, wouldn’t she?
Then again, after her reaction when their mother had died, it might be useful for her to attend.
Maybe.
She still had time to figure that one out.
“We’re going to prepare for his with the funeral home so hopefully we won’t end up in this same situation again.” Christian changed the subject deftly. That was a talent they both had acquired from their mother.
“Good idea.”
“There was one other thing I needed to talk to you about.”
“Go for it. I’ve got a scheduled meeting coming up in a few minutes, so now’s your chance.” Angelica deleted a slew of emails that she didn’t need to answer and filed a few others that were already taken care of.
“Mom took you out of the will.”
Angelica swallowed the lump that instantly formed in her throat. Something about that made everything so final. The break in their relationship had been so deep that nothing would have been able to resolve it.
“I’m so sorry,” Christian added.
“Don’t be.” Angelica steeled herself, because what else could she do with that information? She didn’t have time to process it through. She didn’t want or need any money that her mom might have given her, but it was the principle of the matter. She had been pushed out.
Completely.
Her mother had never truly loved her, had she? Angelica had been a means to an end and nothing else, a failure because she hadn’t been born a boy, so they’d had to try it again. Taking off her reading glasses and pinching the bridge of her nose, Angelica closed her eyes.
“I’m not honestly surprised by that,” Angelica added. “Mom and I didn’t have a very complicated relationship, and I knew exactly where I stood with her.”
“But you deserve—”
“It doesn’t matter,” Angelica interrupted.
“It does!” Christian implored. “It does matter, Ange. You’re her daughter. She gave birth to you. She cared—”
“She didn’t.” Angelica had to bite that back hard.
“She didn’t care about me, Christian, and you have to understand that.
She never cared about me like she did you, and you shouldn’t feel bad for that.
Because that’s on her and no one else. She made mistakes.
She wasn’t a perfect parent or a perfect person.
But I refused to let her affect my life any longer.
I refuse to entertain even the notion that she might have felt any different. It’s not worth my time. Not anymore.”
The silence was so loud and thick that she could have cut it with a knife. Hell, where was Hope when she needed her? Angelica clenched her fist on top of her desk and tried to refocus everything.
“I assume she left you just about everything,” Angelica stated.
“Yes,” Christian squeaked out.
“Good. You and your family deserve it. Far more than I do.”
“But you have a family now, don’t you?”
Angelica turned slightly, looking at the picture that Eva had drawn all those years ago, the one she’d framed and put on the table right behind her desk, the one that she would never get rid of. Her heart tightened right before her entire body relaxed.
“Yes, yes, I do.”
“I’ve seen the social media posts and the tabloids.”
Angelica let out a wry chuckle. “Yeah.”
“So you’re finally out to the world.”
“I am. We… are.” Angelica kept looking at that picture, the crude drawing of each of them with all the math and numbers scribbled across the rest of the white space. “It’s not exactly how I wanted the news story to break, but it’ll have to do.”
“It’s been pretty nasty.”
“It has, but it’s nothing I can’t handle.” Angelica looked up at the knock on her door. “Speaking of, I need to go deal with a defamation lawsuit. Call me later if you have any other questions. But I’ll email you a checklist that can get you started with what to do.”
“Thanks.”
Angelica could hear the smile in his voice. “Love you, Christian.”
“Love you!”
Hanging up, Angelica set her phone on top of her desk and looked directly at Logan and Florence.
Neither of them seemed very happy, but she didn’t suppose this was one of those meetings that was about good news.
She’d known that going into it. Still, only being back one day, she wasn’t sure she was prepared for this.
Hope at least had a few more days before she had to dive back into work and filming for her morning cooking show.
Angelica grabbed her iPad and moved to shut the door to her office as they all sat at the conference table in the larger connected room to her office.
When she sat down, they were still quiet…
far too quiet. Angelica took out her stylus and just waited to see whatever would happen next, because she didn’t know where to start the conversation.
“Our lawyers think this is going to get messy,” Logan started.
And that didn’t surprise her. She’d talked with her lawyers, and they’d told her pretty much the same.
The lawsuits and countersuits and all of the accusations were going to get messy and long-winded and drawn out for years.
It was Angelica’s job to bolster herself for the long haul now because she was in it even if she didn’t want to be at this point.
“Production’s goal is to make sure that the show doesn’t get shut down,” Florence said, looking directly at her. What she wasn’t saying was that production would choose the show over her. They had more loyalty to that, but Angelica could read between the lines.
This was just her job on the line so far, maybe Hope’s eventually, but right now the focus was on her, and she’d do her best to keep it on her. Hope didn’t need to feel the brunt of Josef’s frustration and anger.
“Our best hope is that the judge will throw the case out of the court because there isn’t enough evidence, but it’s still going to take us a while, and several hearings, to get even to that point.” Logan shook his head. “I’m so sorry, Ange.”
“It’s nothing.” Angelica breathed slowly.
She’d almost said it was nothing she couldn’t handle, or that she’d expected something like this, which was all true.
But what she felt was that she’d deserved this in some way, and just that thought didn’t settle well inside her.
Because as much as that was the feeling that was coming up, she wasn’t sure that she believed it anymore.
“It’s not nothing.” Logan flicked his gaze to Florence. “We should have put an end to Josef well before we did, and we had politics to navigate when it came to that, and I’m sorry. We should have protected you better, and you shouldn’t have had to deal with everything you did while on set.”
Angelica’s chest tightened. Her eyes stung with tears, but like hell would she cry right now. Looking down at her iPad, which still had no notes on it whatsoever, she used it to focus herself. She hadn’t expected that, and definitely not today.
“Thank you,” Angelica said quietly. “How many people are named directly in the lawsuit?”
“Just you and me, so far,” Logan answered. “So right now, it’s looking fairly good, but we anticipate that’ll be expanded going forward. We’ll have a few meetings with the lawyers so they can interview us and hear our side of everything and go from there.”
“I understand how this works.” Angelica lifted her chin up, flicking her gaze to Florence.
How much of this did she actually know? Probably far more now than when she’d taken the job, and certainly more now that they’d filmed the last five episodes.
“Going forward with filming, I think we need to find a better way to protect the crew from Josef’s interference. ”
“Agreed,” Florence said with a sharp nod. “I’ve been tossing around some ideas about that.”
“Good.” Angelica almost asked her what those were, but she really didn’t have the bandwidth today to go through them. “About filming…”
“What about it?” Logan asked nervously, as if he was anticipating that she would hand in her resignation right here and now.
Which she’d honestly thought about doing, more than once.
“I’ll film the rest of this season, but unless you can prove that it’ll be worth it, I think going forward we need to go back to the shorter seasons.” Angelica tapped the stylus against the tabletop. “It’s too hard on everyone.”
“It’ll be easier when Josef is completely out of the picture,” Logan said.
“You just told me that it’ll be years for that to happen.”
Logan shrugged.
“We’ll evaluate it at the end of the season. I promise.” Florence nodded at Angelica. “I know the start of this season has been rough on everyone, but I do hope we’ve made some progress in smoothing out the bumps.”
Angelica pursed her lips in Florence’s direction. “That remains to be seen.”
Florence frowned.
Logan winced. “Ange, Josef’s influence isn’t completely gone yet. It’ll take time to weed that out of the show itself.”
“I don’t know how much longer I can wait.” Angelica looked at each one of them directly. “And we’re here to talk about the defamation lawsuit that he’s bringing against us, so I suggest we talk about that. Because he hasn’t completely left the show, whether you want to admit that or not.”
“You’re right.” Logan put his hands out to the sides. “I’m sorry.”
Nodding to acknowledge the apology, Angelica pulled up her calendar. “Now, when am I meeting with the lawyers?”