CHAPTER FIFTEEN #2
Grayson chuckled softly, leaning his hip against the counter beside her, watching her eat the culinary disaster with complete fascination. Ryder and Spencer exchanged a highly entertained look, clinking their beer bottles together in a silent toast to Grayson’s endless, willing suffering.
***
The following afternoon, the atmosphere in the formal drawing room of the Ashford-Wale estate was infinitely more civilized, though no less chaotic.
The mahogany coffee table had been buried under a mountain of architectural blueprints, fabric swatches, and leather-bound financial ledgers.
Eleanor Ashford-Wale and Margaret Lockhart were seated on the plush silk sofa, deep in a highly intense debate over a collection of imported French linens.
"The sage green is beautiful, Margaret, I agree," Eleanor said, holding up a square of soft, woven fabric to the sunlight streaming through the windows.
"But we don't know the gender yet. Ivory is timeless.
If we use the ivory for the drapery in the primary nursery here, we can accent it with the sage green. "
"But the natural light in the Lockhart nursery faces east," Margaret countered, elegantly adjusting her reading glasses. She was holding a blueprint of her own home’s second floor.
"The morning sun washes out ivory. If we put the sage green in our house, and the ivory in yours, the baby will have a distinct environment in both. "
They had immediately agreed that the child would need a fully equipped, meticulously designed nursery in both estates. Neither grandmother was willing to compromise on proximity, and they had thrown themselves into the planning with the combined tactical precision of a military operation.
Across the room, standing by the marble fireplace, Arthur Ashford-Wale and John Lockhart were engaged in a different battle.
"You are being too conservative, Arthur," John said, his deep voice rumbling as he tapped a gold pen against a financial ledger.
"If we merge the initial trust funds into this aggressive tech portfolio, the compound interest by the time the child is eighteen will dwarf the standard municipal bonds you’re suggesting. "
"I am not being conservative, John, I am being responsible," Arthur argued, crossing his arms over his chest. "We are establishing the baseline trust. The aggressive portfolios can be built when they are five.
I want this initial account anchored in real estate and blue-chip stocks. Solid. Unshakeable."
"The child is an Ashford and a Lockhart," John pointed out with a proud, booming laugh. "They will inherit the earth regardless of what we put in this specific account today. But I want my grandchild to have a war chest."
Arthur chuckled, shaking his head at his lifelong friend. "A war chest for an infant. Only you, John."
"Gentlemen," Margaret called out from the sofa, waving a blueprint in their direction. "Have the contractors finalized the plans for the gate in the stone wall?"
"Yes," Arthur confirmed, stepping away from the fireplace.
"They are breaking ground next week. It will be a wrought-iron double gate, wide enough for a stroller, with a paved, heated pathway connecting the two back patios.
No snow or ice in the winter. The baby will be able to move between the houses seamlessly. "
Eleanor smiled, her eyes shining as she looked at the chaotic mess of love and legacy spread across the table.
The path that had brought them to this moment was built on a foundation of tears and betrayal, but looking at the united front of the two families, she knew that this child was already the most fiercely protected, deeply loved human being on the planet.
***
Four states away, in a dingy, cramped rental house on the outskirts of an Ohio suburb, the atmosphere was a stark, rotting contrast to the joy radiating from the Rhode Island estates.
The air in the small living room was stale, smelling faintly of cheap cigarettes and desperation. The yellowed wallpaper peeled at the corners, and the single overhead light cast a harsh, unforgiving glare over the women huddled around a laminate coffee table.
Linda Winters sat with her elbows on the table, her hands buried in her graying hair. Beside her, Aunt Beatrice and Aunt Brenna sat in silence, while Chloe paced the length of the stained carpet.
Olivia was not there. Since the day they had driven away from the coast, Olivia had barely spoken to them. She had locked herself in her small bedroom, drowning in the bitter ashes of her ruined future, giving up on the life she had tasted.
But her family had not given up.
"She won't even eat," Linda whispered, her voice cracking as she looked toward the closed bedroom door down the narrow hallway. "She just lies there. She loved him so much, and now she has nothing."
"Because that Lockhart bitch stole it," Chloe spat, stopping her pacing to glare at the wall. "She knew exactly what she was doing. I don't care what the security cameras showed, and I don't care about the accident. She drank that glass on purpose. She saw an opportunity, and she trapped him."
"Chloe is right," Aunt Brenna said, her voice dropping into a low, venomous register.
She picked up a lukewarm mug of coffee, her knuckles white.
"Kennedy Lockhart is a billionaire heiress. She could have had any man in the world, but she wanted Grayson. She used our mistake to force herself into his bed, and now she’s using a pregnancy to lock him down. "
"And Grayson is just letting her do it," Beatrice added, her eyes wide with a frantic, paranoid energy. "He threw Olivia away like garbage because he felt obligated to the baby. He’s blinded by his morals."
"Olivia gave up," Linda said softly, lifting her head.
Her eyes were red-rimmed, but a calculating desperation had begun to replace the guilt that had initially consumed her.
She looked at her sister, her sister-in-law, and her eldest daughter.
"She thinks it’s over. She thinks because Kennedy is pregnant, the door is permanently closed. "
"It isn't closed," Brenna stated firmly, setting her mug down with a sharp thud.
"Grayson loved Olivia. He was going to marry her.
You don't just turn off those feelings overnight.
He is trapped in a situation with a woman he never wanted.
If we can just prove to him that Kennedy isn't the saint he thinks she is... if we can expose her, or show him that he’s making a mistake... "
"We have to do something," Chloe agreed, stepping closer to the table, her eyes gleaming with a reckless, vindictive fire. "We can't just sit here in this dump while that woman lives in a mansion on Grayson’s dime. They took everything from us. We need to take it back."
"But how?" Beatrice whispered, looking nervously between them. "They have security. They have lawyers. If we go anywhere near them, they’ll call the police."
"We don't go near them," Linda said slowly, the gears of a new, deeply misguided plot turning in her mind.
She looked at the cheap, burner cell phone sitting on the table.
"Not directly. We just need to plant a seed of doubt. Grayson is honorable, but he is also a businessman. He requires proof. If we can find a way to make him question Kennedy’s motives...
if we can make him believe that she planned this pregnancy to trap him... the foundation will crack."
The four women sat in the dim, stale light of the rental house, feeding off each other’s toxic delusions.
They had learned absolutely nothing from the catastrophic failure of their first scheme.
Blinded by their own greed and their refusal to accept defeat, they began to quietly, maliciously plot in the shadows, convinced that they could still force the fairy tale ending they believed they were owed.