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The was a long moment of silence and then, “We’ve always done this with the stepsister. I’m not quite sure what the problem is, seeing as she’s not actually part of y’all’s family. The will has stipulations. The only ones that will inherit are those that are rightful ‘Singh’ heirs. Since Hades isn’t Ansel’s daughter, he left her out of that part of the will. Technically, she’s really only an employee.”
There was such a lull that it started to get oppressive.
My heart started to pound and I thought…this is it.
This is where they all figure it out.
“What do you mean she’s not Ansel’s?” Keene asked in a very careful voice.
“Paternity was ran on both twins at birth. It was found that Caristonia was Ansel Singh’s, but Hades wasn’t. The mother apparently was also seeing a circus worker at the time,” the lawyer murmured.
Silence.
Dead silence.
“I want her given her share, and I don’t care what you have to do. She is paid what she’s owed. Then, you pay her back pay for what she hasn’t gotten, either,” Keene snarled.
“That’s not…that’s not possible. The stipulations in the will…” The lawyer sounded flabbergasted.
Meanwhile, my heart was freakin’ pounding.
The door to the front of the house opened, and I turned woodenly to see Hancock walk through the door.
He had my suitcase in one hand, and a little girl around five or six in the crook of his other arm.
He took one look at my face and stopped dead, his angry gaze going to my sister, as if she was responsible for putting the look on my face.
He whispered into the little girl’s ear and set her down.
She walked right into the kitchen as if she’d done it a half a million times and disappeared.
Hancock took a step forward as if to insert himself between us before Keene’s angry voice on the phone could be heard.
“I don’t care, Rafferty. I don’t care if we all go bankrupt. You will pay her the money that’s owed to her. You will tell me now everything you have on each one of us, including Hades, and you will make sure you do it all by tonight or I’ll be finding a new lawyer,” Keene snarled.
“Sir,” Ted said. “It doesn’t work like that. I can’t just do that without the approval of all of you. And Ansel’s stipulations in his will strictly prohibit sharing anything with Hades Pearl Singh.”
I knew that.
He’d practically told me the day that the will had been read to us.
“Well, then I’ll find a lawyer that can interpret the will how we want, and you’re relieved of service to the Singh family,” Keene said calmly now.
“But…”
Keene had already hung up on the dude, though.
Which made me feel momentarily better.
I’d thought the guy was a complete dick since the moment I’d met him.
But since I hadn’t wanted to rock the boat, I’d kept my mouth shut about it.
Hancock backed away until his back was toward the wall opposite of me and stayed silent.
Meanwhile, I took my first long look at Zip’s face.
“We’re getting a new lawyer,” Keene growled. “And we need to find Hades. She can’t hear about this from anyone but us. But it won’t change a thing. She’s our sister.”
If I was a crier, I would’ve cried in that instant.
But I’d learned long ago that tears literally solved nothing.
They got you nowhere.
They were literally just a bodily function that sometimes people got now.
I hadn’t cried since I was fourteen.
But the happy feeling in my chest was blooming into something I hadn’t realized I needed. Their understanding and their love.
Hancock looked at me. I could feel his gaze on my face. But I didn’t look away from Zip’s eyes.
She’d been watching my reaction.
And when I hadn’t reacted correctly to the news that we’d just gotten, she started to put a few things together.
“Leave finding her to me,” Zip said quietly. “We need to get her paid, though. She can’t be out there working her ass off for minimum wage when we damn well know we pay our usual workers triple that.”
“Agreed.” Keene sighed. “I’ve already been going over numbers all morning, Zip. There’s something incredibly fishy going on with this circus. Dad was shady as fuck, and now that I’ve had time to actually look into all of this instead of playing the stupid ring-fucking-master all day every day for a fuckin’ year to please that bastard, I’m seeing more and more inconsistencies. I think we need some sort of investigator that can look into all of this…we have to find whatever it was that he was hiding. And I don’t have the knowledge to dig that deep into this stuff.”
Zip finally looked away and acknowledged Hancock. “I have to go. But I’ll look into that, too. I know a few people.”
Based on her finding me without using Folsom, I had a feeling that she could find someone.
