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“You better know what you’re doing,” Colton murmurs beside me, making Nic scoff at his lack of faith.
“Have I ever led you wrong?”
Colton scoffs right back and I decide to get this figured out before it turns into some petty bullshit fight through a phone. “Alright,” Nic says. “Hold the phone down at the table so I can see them both up close.”
I do as I’m asked and as Nic looks over the certificates, Colton looks down at me. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he demands, keeping his voice low but with the silence in the room, every ear has a front-row seat to our conversation.
“Thinking like a woman,” I tell him, earning myself a few irritated scoffs from the table of men before me, every single one of them a sexist asshole. “You dove headfirst into trying to keep her from getting her hands on your father’s fortune that you didn’t even stop to think if it’s even real—”
“It’s real,” comes grunted from the left-hand side of the table.
My eyes snap up to the bastards before me. “Are you sure about that?” I question, looking back at Colton. “If it were real, where’s the marriage license and why the hell are we only hearing about it now? Not to mention, there’s always a delay in getting these certificates. It takes at least six weeks after the wedding to receive it, but according to the date on the certificate, they were married less than two weeks ago. It doesn’t add up. Besides, your dad was a lot of things, but he wasn’t careless. If he was going to marry some gold-digging whore, he would have done it the right way and he would have had the tightest prenup that money could buy. He cared about money bags, his reputation, and his businesses more than his own children. So no, I don’t think he would have risked it all for some girl. Even if she was the love of his life.”
“I’m not going to lie,” he murmurs, “I haven’t been able to wrap my head around him actually doing this but the certificate was there …”
“Are you serious?” a voice says from across the room. “You’re taking advice from an uneducated girl who comes from trash? Colton, please think this through. You need to be smart about this.”
Colton’s stare is sharp enough to kill and the man instantly goes quiet. “Pack up your things and get the fuck out of my house.”
“I … I …”
“NOW.”
The old man reluctantly stands up and starts packing up his things with a huff, but I don’t get to watch the show as Nic’s voice comes through the phone again. “O, lower the phone so I can see the bottom half.”
I adjust my phone as silence falls across the room again and after a long, agonizing minute, Nic’s voice cuts through the room. “It’s fake.”
“What?” Colton demands, his brows flying up as he steals the phone and looks at Nic through the screen. “What do you mean it’s fake? How can you tell?”
Nic lets out a sigh. He’s not exactly one who likes having to explain himself but seeing as though this case is a little different from the bullshit he’s used to dealing with, he sucks it up and gets on with his explanation. “O, grab the certificates.”
I slip them off the table and look down at them, one in each hand. “Got them.”
“See the bottom of your parent’s marriage certificate?” Nic questions. “There’s an emblem and it’s really clear, bold lines but the Carrington one has bleeding. The picture isn’t as clear. A government-issued certificate wouldn’t have that. This was printed by a cheap printer and I bet the paper quality even feels different.”
I rub my thumbs over the paper and look up at Colton. “He’s right. They’re different.”
“I’m always fucking right,” Nic mutters as Colton hands me back my phone and takes the certificates from me, studying them for himself.
Colton takes all of three seconds to notice the differences between the two and when he does, his hand slams down on the table before he glances up at his lawyers. “We’re done here. Come back tomorrow, I want that bitch done for forgery and inheritance fraud.”
“Yes, sir,” they say then dive into the paperwork on the table, hastily getting it all cleaned up before Colton gives them something else to do.
He picks the certificates up from the table and takes my elbow before leading me out of the room. “You could have said that you thought it was fake hours ago and saved me all that bullshit.”
Nic scoffs and I know without a doubt that a sarcastic comment is about to go flying from between his lips. “Yeah, because she’s the one responsible for saving your ass. That was fucking bullshit, man. Your lawyers should have picked that up the second they looked at it.”
