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“You didn’t wonder why he wasn’t here yet?” he asks, his voice hard. “It’s because he’s indisposed. Permanently. Which you might have found out about already if you hadn’t supported him going off the fucking grid with Willow. I know you rich fuckers are fucked in the head, but you let him hold Willow captive while he tried to break her. You all knew about it. Don’t even try to tell me you didn’t. And you accepted it.”
“How dare you—”
“Shut. The fuck.Up,” Malice snaps, cutting Troy’s father off. He’s taller than Alexander by a good few inches, and even with the man trying to draw himself up to look intimidating, he’s got nothing compared to the raw violence Malice exudes. “You knew he’d be unreachable, and you knew why. You gave him the space to use and abuse Willow, and that’s why you neglected to find out that his cabin burned down. With him inside.”
There’s a small intake of breath from Olivia, and I swing my gaze over to her, watching her digest that new piece of information. I can tell she recognizes the symmetry of it, and she should, considering she burned down a house herself once. She killed Willow’s mom in a fire, forever altering the course of Willow’s life. And now we’ve done the same to her, in a way, snatching away her deal and killing the monster Willow was forced to marry.
“Alexander,” Stella says, her voice a harsh whisper. She puts her hand on her husband’s arm, clutching it through his suit jacket. “It can’t be true, can it? Troy can’t be—”
Her other hand comes up to her mouth, trembling just a bit.
Alexander takes a bit longer to snap out of his shock. He blinks at us for a long moment and then looks to his wife. “I… I don’t know.”
“It’s true,” I tell them with a shrug. “We’re not gonna waste time trying to convince you. You’ll find out for yourself soon enough once you go check out his little hideout in the woods. You should’ve kept that little monster on a shorter leash. Maybe told him ‘no’ a time or two, so he’d know the meaning of the word.”
“He was our only son,” Alexander snaps back, his face purpling. “And now he’s—”
Vic cuts him off with a scoff. “I highly doubt you care all that much about him. It’s thelegacyyou’re mourning, isn’t it? The fact that he was your only heir. You didn’t care about him as a person. None of you know what it means to care about someone as a person.”
Something passes over the older man’s face, making it twist into an ugly shape. It’s easy to tell that Vic is right, although I’m sure Alexander would never admit it. Troy was their only son, and I’m sure they’re horrified to hear of his death—but not for the reasons that any good parent would be.
As if he’s just had the same thought I did, Malice snorts.
Alexander hears the noise and whips his head toward Mal, nostrils flaring as he glares at him. “You wouldn’t know a legacy if it slapped you in your face,” he spits. “Don’t presume to judge me.”
Malice’s smile is more a baring of teeth, like an animal about to bite. “I was judging you long before this moment, don’t worry about that.”
Stella still looks stunned, shaking her head as she clutches her husband’s arm. She hasn’t shed a single tear though, and it just proves even more strongly that these rich families are mercenary and heartless. They try to talk down to us, acting like we’re not even worthy of breathing the same air as them. But at least we take care of our own, for reasons that have nothing to do with money.
And they’re about to find that out.
Alexander doesn’t seem to want to take his chances with Malice, understandably, so he turns on Willow instead. He takes a step forward, eyes narrowed at her.
“You will regret this,” he hisses. “I knew you were going to be a poison as soon as my son brought you up. I thought that perhaps the part of you that had Stanton blood would be enough, but I see the trash won out. I will make your life a living hell for what you’ve done to my family. I’ll ruin you. I’lldestroyyou.”
Willow doesn’t so much as flinch back away from him, but I can sense the way she tenses under the onslaught of his vitriol. I wonder if it reminds her of Troy, and it takes everything in me not to lay Alexander flat on his back with a single punch.
Vic steps up this time, his face neutral but his eyes burning. “You should be careful what you say next, Mr. Copeland,” he murmurs.
“Excuse me?” Alexander’s voice rises, and he tamps it down to a strained whisper as he grits out, “Don’t think you can threaten me.”
“It’s not a threat. Not really. More of a warning. You should watch what you say and do.”
“And why is that?”
Vic shrugs. “Because thanks to our connection with his widow, I have access to several of Troy’s protected files. Files that show things I very much doubt the Copeland family would want brought to light.”
Stella narrows her eyes at him, shaking off some of her shock. “Just what are you implying?”
“That your family isn’t as clean as you’d like to pretend you are. And if you come after Willow or me and my brothers, we’ll reveal that fact to the world,” Vic says. “I can destroy your reputation in this city with the push of a button. And you’re not going to stop Willow from taking what’s owed to her either.”
“What do you mean?” Alexander demands, his gaze flying from Vic to Willow. “Nothing is owed to her! Not from us.”
Willow lifts her chin as she faces down her raging in-laws. She looks like a fucking boss-ass bitch in her gold dress, standing strong and tall like a queen, and I can’t tear my gaze away from her.
“Before Troy died, he signed everything over to me,” she tells them. “I was already legally owed a portion of his estate as his widow, but I guess he wanted to make sure I would be truly taken care of.” Her voice twists a little on those last few words, and I can hear the weight of her trauma behind them. Then she clears her throat and adds, “So he left everything to me. Including his money and his place on the board of your company.”
There’s near pin-drop silence in our little circle as she lets them take that in, and then Troy’s parents explode.
