“Buy it,” I told him, staring at my reflection in the window.
“Buy what, Greina?” Marcus asked, confused.
“The debt. The shell company holding the note on Ashford Financial. Pay whatever premium Cerberus wants. Just get that paper in my name before 6:00 p.m.”
When I walked out of my office and into the elevator, I checked my reflection in the chrome doors. The scared girl was gone. Tonight, I wasn’t going home to visit my father. I was going to visit my debtor.
The dining room of the Ashford estate felt less like a place for a family meal and more like a crypt where affection went to die. The air was frigid, the silence heavy enough to choke on.
My mother, Constance, sat to my right. She was twisting her linen napkin until her knuckles turned white, her eyes fixed on the tablecloth. She would not look at me. She had spent thirty years perfecting the art of invisibility to survive Edward’s temper.
Lucas sat opposite me, staring intently at the floral pattern on the fine china. He gave a barely perceptible nod, his foot tapping nervously against the parquet floor. His silence was a loud, clear signal: He knows. Be careful.
And then there was Edward.
He sat at the head of the table, blocking the light from the fireplace. He didn’t offer a greeting. He didn’t ask how I had been for the last five years. He just reached for the crystal decanter and poured himself a glass of a vintage Bordeaux that retails for $3,000 a bottle. Money he definitely didn’t have.
As he tipped the bottle, I saw it. A microscopic tremor in his hand. The crystal neck rattled against the glass rim—clink-clink-clink. He set the bottle down too hard to mask it.
He wasn’t calm. He was terrified.
“I saw the news,” he said, slicing his steak with unnecessary violence. The knife screeched against the porcelain. “Beginner’s luck is a dangerous drug, Greina. It makes amateur girls think they are actually businesswomen.”
He took a long sip of wine, his eyes drilling into mine. “And how is the draftsman? Still playing with his crayons while you do the heavy lifting?”
He meant Julian. He always called Julian the “draftsman,” spitting the word like it was a slur, refusing to acknowledge him as an architect or a husband.
Five years ago, those words would have made me shrink into my chair. I would have stammered, tried to defend us, tried to beg for his respect.
Tonight, I just watched him. I watched the sweat beading on his upper lip despite the chill in the room. I watched the way his eyes darted involuntarily to the grandfather clock against the wall, measuring the time he had left before his world imploded.
He wasn’t a king holding court. He was a cornered animal baring its teeth because it had no other defense. I didn’t feel anger. I felt the cold, clinical detachment of a pathologist looking at a tumor. I was just waiting to make the cut.
“We need to protect the family assets,” he said, his voice dropping to a register that feigned paternal concern. “I have been speaking with specialists. You are obviously under a tremendous amount of strain, Greina. The expansion, the media attention… it is making you erratic. Unstable.”
He reached into his jacket pocket and slid a thick manila envelope across the mahogany table. It stopped inches from my plate.
I opened the folder. The top document was a draft petition for Emergency Conservatorship. Beneath it were three psychiatric evaluations detailing my “severe nervous breakdown,” my “paranoia,” and my “inability to manage complex finances.”
All signed, sealed, and ready to be filed with the probate court the moment I refused to cooperate.
I glanced at the signature on the top evaluation. Dr. Aerys Vance. A man I hadn’t seen since I was twelve years old.
“Vance signed this?” I asked, keeping my voice flat. “He hasn’t treated me in decades. He hasn’t even seen me. He would lose his medical license for perjury before the ink dried on this page.”
Edward smiled. A cruel, thin stretching of his lips that didn’t reach his eyes.
