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But Alistair is right: it’s too much. It’s taking over, and becoming a problem. It’s not “medicine”, it’s a crutch, and I know I have to stop.
It’s thinking back to Alistair catching me drinking vodka out of a fucking paper coffee cup that stops me from calling down to room service—though I wouldn’t put it past Alistair to have thought that far ahead and warned the concierge desk about letting me order a drink.
Part of me wants to be annoyed by that.
The other part silently thanks him.
I jump, startled, when the house phone rings.
“Ms. White?”
I’m incognito, obviously, so I have a code name.
“Yes?”
“We have a package down here for you that was just delivered by courier. It’s addressed to a Ms. LeBlanc, but the courier was most insistent that your suite was the intended recipient.”
My brow furrows, but then it clicks.
“Is it from a Rosa Faucher, in Paris?”
“Yes. It was first delivered to a loft building in Soho, who redirected it here via the courier. Shall I send it up, Ms. White?”
Alistair’s building. “Please, and thank you.”
A few minutes later, a bellhop delivers a documents mailer to my door. I retreat to the living room and to what has become my favorite reading chair in the few days I’ve been here. I tear open the mailer, and sure enough, it’s the papers Rosa said she found while cleaning my dad’s office.
Immediately, it becomes apparent they’re not all meant for me. Yes, the envelope on the top of the stack has a post-it note with my name on it. But the three other documents “attached” to it seem to have been included only accidentally, when the envelope for me managed to get stuck in the same paperclip that’s holding the other three pages together.
The first is a valuation of a building in Montpellier, France that it seems my father was at one time interested in purchasing. The second is just the itinerary from some vacation he and Marie took three years ago. But when I flip to the last document, I stiffen.
It’s a copy of my father’s living will.
I’ve read bits of it before, of course, after it was made known to me that—surprise—I was being forced to marry Massimo Carveli, sadistic psychopath extraordinaire.
Just the same, I scan through it. Some clauses are to be enacted in the event of his “incapacitation”, like a coma. Things like his underbosses taking over various aspects of the business and voting in a new head of the organization from a list of trusted men. Other clauses only become relevant in the event of his actual death, like the stipulation that his wealth and assets be evenly distributed amongst Marie, Camille, and myself.
I scan the parts I’ve read before, and then, for whatever morbid reason, I flip to the last page.
The page where my fate is sealed to Massimo.
I sigh as my eyes drop to the bottom of the page…and then I frown.
There is no “marriage in the interest of the organization” clause.
My brain glitches as I re-read the page again, over and over. Have I missed it somehow? I flip back to the beginning and read the whole thing through again more carefully, but there’s nothing.
Not a goddamn thing about me marrying Massimo.
I stare at it a moment longer, theorizing that this must be an earlier draft. But then I skip to the last page again, and glance down at the signatures. It’s been signed by my father, and two of his lawyers, on the date of the original signing. Underneath, there are additional signatures from the last time the will was approved and ratified.
What the fuck.
I freeze when I look at the date next to my father’s last signature.
…Three days before he fell into his coma.
My pulse races as I keep staring at the will, not quite sure what the hell this means. Quickly, I snatch the envelope with my name stickied to it and rip it open.
