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That viper had been Lana Price-Carmichael, and she’d been another sort of cancer altogether, a deadlier, more destructive sort.
Within two years of Marcella’s death, Lana had slipped her way into Arthur’s life until she’d become Lana Price-Carmichael-Judge. She managed to leech off him for the next dozen or so years until he died from a massive heart attack. Then she somehow inherited the entire company and most of his fortune along with it.
Which I believe was utter bullshit.
Lana didn’t exactly have Arthur’s business acumen, though, and she listened to advice from others even less. Not even a year after Arthur’s death, JFI found itself on the brink of financial ruin, and Lana had been forced to sell half the company off to Nash Corporations to save face.
So here we were, another year later, and the company was back in the black—because of Ezra Nash, Lana’s co-CEO from Nash Corporations—and business was looking up again.
Except I’m not so sure Arthur would be reassured by that bit of news. His only daughter was still destitute and barely keeping her head above water. That wouldn’t sit well with him, no matter what was going on with his company. She was what had mattered; I’d known him long enough to be well aware of that. Which made my mission to find out the truth behind his will even more persistent.
Because none of this made sense.
Arthur had left Kaitlynn mere scraps, which entailed a trust fund that had paid for her college tuition, then allocated a grand each month until she was allowed to take control over all of it when she turned thirty. Compared to the net worth of Arthur and his company, that had been nothing. Nothing at all. He’d donated more to his least favorite charities when he’d been alive. Hell, Brick and I had walked
away with more inheritance than Kaitlynn had.
It was all just wrong. And what made it even fishier to me was the fact that Lana had gained so much: the money (which she wasted), the houses (that she’d sold), the company (she’d nearly lost). And Arthur hadn’t even been that fond of her. It hadn’t taken him long after they married to discover her true nature; I kind of had the feeling he’d only stayed with her because he hadn’t wanted to abandon Brick and me.
So why had he left Lana so much and Kaitlynn so little?
He hadn’t; that was the only conclusion I’d been able to come to.
It had taken me some scheming, but I’d managed to get my hands on Arthur’s last will and testament without Lana realizing it, and I’d pored over the document, searching for discrepancies. When I found none, it left me at a loss but no less determined to discover how Lana had managed such deceit. She’d done something to get what she wanted; I was sure of it. I just had to figure out what that something was.
Opening my car door, I stepped from the vehicle and made my way up the walk toward the rear entrance of the building. As I passed the opening to the garden that grew in the courtyard, I could barely make out the statue in the center of the trees and bushes that Arthur had erected of Marcella after she’d died.
To me, it made the courtyard feel like a damn cemetery, though honestly, the entire company had felt dead after Arthur’s passing. Hell, even I felt dead inside. But Nash had pumped some life into the place when he’d arrived last year, so I was determined to do my part to help restore it as well.
I was going to cut out the rest of the cancer.
I was going to expose Lana for all her lies and trickery, and I was going to get her removed from JFI and hopefully my stepsister’s life forever. It was the only right and just thing to do.
Once I pushed my way inside, I bypassed the elevator bay and walked up the three flights to my office instead. It was one of those days I felt antsy and needed to keep on the move. That could’ve been because of my interaction with Darmon this morning, but deep inside, I knew it was more because of the dark-headed beauty I’d crossed paths with in the entrance of Kaitlynn’s building.
Gabby.
Beautiful women like her tended to make me question why I’d given up on dating and relationships. Because I liked women. They were soft and supple, and Jesus, they smelled divine. I especially liked the craftier, sly ones who kept you on your toes and your mind sharp. My body began to crave the physical contact I hadn’t had with one in what felt like forever until all I could remember was the brush of that elbow that had barely grazed my stomach only minutes ago.
Gabby.
Instinct told me she was most likely a fervent lover. She’d called out to that boy—Miguel—with a healthy level of heat and passion, her worry for him and irritation bleeding out of her with the brightest of color. How could she kiss or touch or fuck with any less tenacity?
Damn, I needed to stop thinking about this.
I hurried up the staircase a little faster, reminding myself that along with sex, women came with something far more dangerous:
Feelings.
I shuddered and shook my head. Feelings I could do without. As soon as feelings were involved, shit got nasty. When you let someone in, you let them cut into you and expose your soft inner tissue so they could see everything and know you inside and out, the good and the bad, the strong and the weak, the bitter and the ugly. And as soon as you trusted them with your most vulnerable bits, that’s when they struck, when they belittled and nitpicked, when they scoffed and pointed, when they humiliated and hurt you the most, and then eventually turned away, leaving you abandoned and nothing but a gaping, bleeding wound.
Yeah, I could do without soft and pretty if it was just going to land me in that kind of clusterfuck.
Suddenly relieved of my itching, craving desire for sex and a certain dark-haired angel, I exited the stairwell and made my way to my office.
And I know what you’re thinking. Office? I actually worked here? For the company I was certain Lana had stolen from Kaitlynn? Just what the hell kind of hypocrite did that make me?
I talked a big game about seeking justice for my stepsister and eradicating Lana from our lives completely. All the while, I sat up here in my big, cushy office with a head-of-department position, which Lana had given me, and drove my nice car with the money I’d inherited from Arthur, wore my nice clothes, and lived a pleasant, luxurious life, all while Kaitlynn struggled to make ends meet, lived in a shithole, drove a piece of junk, and worked as an unpaid intern for Lana—aka the devil herself.
