“Good,” I say. “I don’t think Dad would cope with both of us locked up.”
He grins, and this one isn’t the usual bullshit he throws at the world. It’s real. Rare enough that I notice it immediately. “Yeah,” he says. “Probably for the best.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
MILLIE
Two Days Later
The living room looks exactly the same as it always has. That’s the part that keeps catching me off guard, the way nothing in this house has changed its face even as everything underneath it has shifted. The same worn sofa where Will slept for weeks. The same side table with Dad’s reading lamp, his folded newspaper, and the ring-stain from twenty years of morning coffee mugs. The same armchair with the slightly flattened left armrest where his elbow always rests. The same space where the three of us ate breakfast, and moved around each other carefully.
It is the most ordinary room in the world, and today it feels like a courtroom.
Dad is home from the hospital and in his chair. He looks smaller than he used to, and I know that’s not my imagination. Days of hospital lighting and the exhaustion of illness have drawn something out of him, some physical substance that I cannot get back for him, no matter how much I want to. But he is here, he is upright, and his eyes when they find mine across the room are exactly what they have always been. Clear, steady, and full of things he will not say directly until he is ready.
Mr. Ellery is already seated at the dining table when I come in, his leather briefcase open at his elbow and a document resting in his hands like he’s been turning it over while he waited. He doesn’t rush to speak. He sits there, patient in that professional way that makes it clear he knows whatever he’s about to say is going to land hard for someone in this room.
Sin is beside me on the sofa.
I called him this morning because Dad asked me to, and Sin showed up without asking a single question, which is exactly who he is. He came wearing his cut too—a statement. My father knows exactly what that patch means, and Sin knows it too. He’s sitting across the room now with his forearms braced on his knees, completely locked in the way he gets when he’s paying attention to every damn thing around him.
Will’s outside on the porch. Dad asked him to wait, and Will said, “Yes, sir,” without hesitation. I watched him walk out through the front door and take up a position against the porch railing where he’s been standing for the last twenty minutes in the March air, the kind that still hasn’t decided if winter is finished or if spring is about to slam Nevada with heat hard enough to crack pavement.
The fact that Dad asked him to wait out there, rather than not come at all, tells me something.
I’m just not sure what yet.
But I know my father well enough to understand that nothing he does is without a purpose.
Dad lifts a hand weakly from the sofa. “Millie, girl… you know that document you’ve been holding onto?” I raise my brow at him. “The one in your bag,” he adds when I don’t answer straight away. “Now’s the time. Get it and give it to Mr. Ellery.”
I started reading it at the hospital, but it made no sense to me—something about a second ledger for the mine.
That Manila folder has been in my bag for weeks.
Heavy cream paper. My name is written across the front in Dad’s handwriting.
God knows I thought about opening it enough times.
Late at night. Sitting at the kitchen counter, I was turning it over in my hands and wondering what could be important enough for Dad to look that serious when he gave it to me.
But every time, I stopped.
Because some part of me already knew opening it meant admitting this day was coming.
And when I did open it and start to read, I had no idea what it meant.
Maybe Mr. Ellery can clarify.
Slowly, I reach into the bag and pull the folder free. The paper feels heavier now than it ever did before, like whatever’s inside has gained weight sitting unopened all these weeks.
I stand and carry it across the room to Mr. Ellery, who takes it carefully. And something in the room changes.
Mr. Ellery opens the folder and nods. “This is the reading of Jonas McClane’s last will and testament.” Mr. Ellery clears his throat, not loudly, not theatrically, just enough to signal he’s ready to begin. Sin glances at me once from where he stands near the fireplace, and I give him the smallest nod. The room settles around it.
“I’ll proceed with the principal provisions first,” Mr. Ellery says, his voice measured and practiced in the way of somebody who has delivered life-changing news often enough to know there’s no graceful way to do it. “And then the codicil, which was added approximately two months ago and forms an important part of your father’s intentions, Miss McClane.”
I fix my eyes on Dad, still not sure why we are listening to my father’s will, prior to his death, but he wanted to let us all know what his intentions are. For us all to be informed beforehand, in case any other issues arise with the Alliance.
