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“You can’t expect me to give you my family’s farm, Riane. I won’t. You know this already. So what do you really want? What did you really come here for?”
With each word, I could feel Cedra’s resignation washing over me. I squeezed her hand a little tighter to give her a little bit of my strength.
Riane’s pretty gray eyes shifted to Ana’s hovering form. I saw uncertainty wash over them before they came back to us.
She cleared her throat.
“You could buy me out. Half of what it’s worth.”
I thought I’d spontaneously lost my hearing. It took me a moment to realize the sudden burst of white-hot rage surging through my body had blotted out Riane’s voice altogether.
I could only stare, mesmerized by the audacity and entitlement of the woman before me.
“And if I don’t?” Cedra asked quietly, her fingers still between my own.
“Then I’ll take you to court and take half the land. I’ve been thinking of coming back here anyway.”
Sparks of anger exploded in my chest like a bundle of tinder flaring to life. It swelled in my chest like an overinflated balloon, threatening to burst. I felt the pressure against my chest, fingers trembling in Cedra’s as I struggled to gather a decent breath of air.
Over the past twelve hours, I’d been kidnapped against my will, threatened by my own parents and locked in a room for hours with no escape. But this—this woman in front of me—ignited a hatred in me so deep, so feral, that I got to my feet, shocked by the intensity of it.
I felt it bubble up from my stomach to my throat like acid. My mouth raced in front of my brain.
“Clearly you believe you can take advantage of Cedra. And why not? She’s loving and protective and generous. If she were even half the partner with you that she is with me, I can see why you’d think coming back here after all these years and blackmailing—yes, blackmailing—the woman who loved you might be a good idea.”
I felt my hair slip out of its makeshift bun, curling around my shoulders like armor as my words pelted the shocked woman in front of me.
“I can even imagine what went through your mind while you planned all this. You probably assumed she was still alone, right? Pining after you. Because it’s hard to meet people on this Star. And when you showed up, oh, she’d be grateful for your return and shower you in all the credits and affection you want.”
Riane’s lips parted as though she dared to breathe a word. I didn’t let her.
“Well, you know what you are, Riane? You’re pathetic, preying on people who love you. You don’t deserve a single kernel of corn from this land. You’re certainly not getting half of this woman’s legacy. And trust me, I will personally see to it that you don’t.”
It seemed to dawn on Riane that she wasn’t going to get anything today. Her pretty eyes glittered dangerously. “I will go through the courts then—”
My bark of laughter was high and shrill, even to my own ears. I didn’t recognize it at all.
“Oh, you think you can win this case? I have a team of lawyers who’d destroy you. A case like this isn’t even worth a minute of their time. They’d get it thrown out by proving the title deed is a fake, a forgery.”
“But it’s not... Cedra put me on the deed to the house,” Riane insisted.
I crossed my hands over my chest, daring her to speak again.
“These are Royal One lawyers, Riane. They have no rules. They’d break every law if it meant making their client happy. And they’d want to make me very happy.”
Well, I was stretching the truth a little. I didn’t even know if I had access to my parents’ lawyers or if they still acknowledged me as their heir. But I pushed on anyway.
“What?” Riane looked me up and down, taking in Cedra’s old work shirt and my bare feet. It was obvious that she was trying to piece me together like a puzzle. “Who are you?”
“Why? So you can blackmail me, too? No, thanks.”
“So, what are you saying? That I own half this place but I get nothing?”
“You get nothing because it’s not yours, Riane,” Cedra finally responded, sitting forward in her chair. “It’s quite simple, really. You never wanted to be a part of my family, even though the gods know I asked frequently enough. The only reason I put you on the deed is because I wanted you to feel like you had stability in your life. A permanent roof over your head, since you lacked that growing up.”
“So you admit that the deed is real, and it’s under my name?”
Every word that came out of those perfectly sculpted lips only seemed to fuel the spiraling anger inside me. I was afraid of what would happen should the spiral whirl out of control. My palm was already itching to connect with that perfectly sculpted cheek.
