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“Yes, ma’am,” the lawyer confirmed.
I pinched the bridge of my nose.
What a nightmare.
“Well, I guess that solves that.” Zip smiled as she stared at the papers in front of her. “What do we do now?”
“Now, we wait for Keene to get home,” Simi murmured quietly.
I had a feeling she wasn’t any happier about this than I was.
Freakin’ great.
“And then what?” Val asked.
I gritted my teeth before I said ‘let’s burn it all to the ground.’
“Then we work the circus like he always wanted us to,” Zip declared.
I wanted to punch her in the throat.
Even from the grave, he was still making my life miserable.
I had that confirmed a few moments later when the lawyer called out to have me stay behind.
My sisters left the room, looking at me curiously, and I dropped back down into my seat.
“What else did he have to say?” I asked.
“He, uh…” he hesitated.
“Just say it,” I ordered, knowing I wasn’t going to like what he had to say, but needing to hear it anyway.
“He, uh, said that you aren’t inheriting anything,” he explained quickly. “But the only way that they’ll inherit is if you cooperate and work with them.”
Well, wasn’t that something.
Great.
Just freakin’ great.
All this work for nothing.
How…fitting.
“Is that it?” I asked.
He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “That’s it.”
I left without another word.
“Did you get more money than the rest of us?” Tony teased.
I looked at her and felt my jaw clench.
Then, because I couldn’t stop myself, I shouldered past her and left without another word, causing her to curse.
I’d bumped her harder than I’d intended.
But I didn’t really care.
I didn’t care about anything anymore.
CHAPTER 1
Moving in with a woman is pretty much saying ‘this pussy is good enough to risk having my shit set on fire.’
-Text from Hades to Hannibal
HADES
Present day
I wouldn’t say that I had the best coping mechanisms.
I also tested people to the point where they either gave up on me, or pushed me away and didn’t want me in their lives anymore.
That was what I’d done to my sister, after all.
I wouldn’t say that I was the worst sister in the world—I mean, I didn’t try to kill her or anything—but I wasn’t the greatest in the world, either.
I liked to test boundaries.
I liked to bug the holy hell out of them all—I mean, what were sisters for?
But also, sometimes they just deserved it.
“Why are you the way that you are?” Keene asked.
I didn’t bother answering him.
He wouldn’t understand why I was the way I was.
None of them would.
So why bother explaining?
“This has to stop,” Crimson murmured.
I looked over at her.
Her eyes made contact with mine, and I sighed.
“You do realize, right, that there are about a thousand lifeguards down there?” I asked.
Crimson’s mouth went into a tight line.
“Here’s my thinking on the matter,” I said stiffly.
“Oh, please enlighten us,” Val murmured.
I’d sent Tony down a water slide that was ‘scary.’ And, since she had issues with being surprised or scared—IE she did either of those things and she might very well pass smooth out due to her narcolepsy—she might’ve passed out on the way down it.
Should I have done it? Probably not.
But Jesus Christ, I was tired of my sister not living her life because she was too scared to do something because she might pass out.
It was…heartbreaking.
I didn’t like seeing her barely live.
Did I do things that were a little bit mean to get her to step out of her comfort zone? Yes.
Should I maybe have gone about that in a different way? Also, yes.
Should I stop pushing her to live her life? I didn’t think so.
“She’s never going to live her life if we don’t force her out of her comfort zone,” I told them all. “You know how she is. She just sits on the bus and hides away from life because she’s too scared that she’s going to pass out and die. That’s no way to live. And if you think that it is, you’re part of the problem.”
They had no response to that, because they knew I was right.
The thing was, Tony wanted to live. She wanted to experience life.
I was the reason that she took two weeks off regularly and experienced the world.
Sure, it might be from the safety of a beach chair, but she still did it.
But that wasn’t all there was to life.
I wanted her to get out and meet new people.
Like she’d done with the football player.
“Do you think that she’s going on vacation with him?” Zip asked, taking a bite of her donut.
‘Him’ being Slone Day, a professional football player who’d come to the circus with Coffey’s friend, Banner.
I’d known the moment that I’d seen them look at each other that they would be perfect for each other.
Someone big and strong—because my God, was he huge—to protect my little sister from life and herself. Someone that would help her live her life and not waste it.
