AllFreeNovel
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“You donated sperm. Have you ever met him? Spoken to him? Read to him? Played with him? Fed him? Bathed him?” Silence. “That’s what I thought.”
We pulled up a long driveway lined with Southern magnolia trees I’d paid for.
Opened the car doors and stepped onto cobblestone pavers I’d paid for.
Walked up a set of stairs and past white, twenty-foot high pillars I’d paid for.
And knocked on the purple-heart wooden double doors I’d paid for.
Asher had his fingers curled around Waylan’s bicep, and the Andretti soldiers had the decency to stand in front of the SUVs with our Black Security guards, arms crossed and silent.
The door swung open as the maid greeted me with shocked eyes. I’d never met her before, but it didn’t surprise me that she knew who I was.
Elsa probably warned the staff to never let me in.
“Bastian!” Elsa called out as she stepped down the last stair in the spiral staircase.
She trotted to the door, her heels clacking on the bocote wood. Leave it to Elsa to ruin historic Antebellum architecture with imported wood floors.
“I wasn’t expecting you!” She tried to hide her irritation, but her eye twitched.
“Do you know the definition of the word extortion?” I didn’t let her answer as I stepped past her and into the foyer I had paid for. The maid had the decency to speed walk away as I continued, “The practice of obtaining something, especially money, through force or threats.”
“I don’t know what you’re talk—”
Her high-pitched words died in her throat when Asher tugged Waylan past the doorway and shut the door behind them.
“I—” Elsa’s eyes darted to me as she fumbled for something to say.
“Stuttering on women is only cute when you don’t look like a five-dollar hooker.” I dragged my eyes down her form. “No offense to hookers.” I took a step toward her, enjoying the way her throat bobbed and her shoulders sagged. “You have ten minutes to leave this home.”
“No, it’s my home—”
I cut her off, “If you want to live some semblance of a happy life, get that mentality out of your head. You own nothing. You are penniless. You have no son. You have no money. You have no home. You have nothing. Your clothes belong to me. This house belongs to me. The cars belong to me. Everything you have spent the past five years building belongs to me.”
I reached into the duffel bag, pulled out the copy of Vince’s folder I’d made before leaving New York, and tossed it at her face. The pictures and paper fell like a torrent of leaves onto the bocote wood.
“You’re done, Elsa. Stop embarrassing yourself.”
She leaned down and picked up a sheet of paper with Waylan’s driver’s license photocopied on it. “I don’t know what you think you have on me, but—”
“You’ve been extorting money out of me, and Waylan has been extorting money out of you. Last I checked, I live in New York, and you two live in Alabama. Interstate communication is FBI jurisdiction, and extortion is a federal crime. Federal extortion charges carry a sentence of up to twenty years in prison, and I have enough to put you away.”
She took a step toward me and clenched her fists at her sides. “I’ll fight this. I have lawyers.”
“You don’t have lawyers. Cryptocurrency may be difficult to trace, but once you have, stealing it doesn’t take more than a talented hacker.”
Niccolaio’s hacker neighbor Dex had drained her account while I’d slept. Justice coursed through my veins as I watched the dread travel across her features.
“I—” She shook her head. “Everett will miss me. He won’t let you send me away. He loves me.”
The laughter I barked out was genuine.
I tsked.
“Oh, Elsa… Everett doesn’t love you. Twenty years is a long time to spend in prison. If no one loves you now, no one is going to love you when your face is as pruned as a loofah.”
Her chest practically caved in with the way her shoulders hunched forward. “What do you want?”
