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Her brows pulling together, Breanna angled her head to look up at him. “You’re my grandmother’s attorney. You don’t know?”
“Listen up, princess—”
“Breanna,” she insisted, almost sounding angry. “Why do you keep calling me that?”
Because that’s who you are to me, baby.
“Listen,” Ian said, softening his voice. I need you to put the pieces together yourself. “Valerie would’ve planned her estate a long, long time ago—likely soon after your grandfather died, and I wasn’t old enough to grow a beard yet, then. My uncle, Raymond, would’ve been the one to draw up her Will.”
“Derek’s father, right?”
“Yes.”
She opened another tab on the screen. “Well, there it is. A trust fund for me with the rest of the estate going to Dalton Trust Development Opco LLC, which is more than generous when you consider she never even wanted to meet me.”
“This isn’t right.” A cursory glance was all it took, not that Breanna would know it. Dated just last year, Raymond St. John and Francesca Keeler witnessed Valerie’s signature.
“That’s what it says.” She took his hand, rubbing her fingers over the back of it. “It’s okay, Sinjin. A million dollars is a heck of a lot of money.”
“A million ain’t shit, baby.” Not to Valerie, anyway. “This house alone is worth at least twenty times that amount.”
Letting his hand go, Breanna shrugged. “It’s a house. Okay, so it’s a massive house, and it’s beautiful, but I didn’t grow up here, my father did. I have no ties to it.”
“You’re a Dalton, and this house is your legacy. Valerie would have never let it go to anyone else.” Turning her chin toward the screen, he pointed. “Look at the date.”
“Yeah, so?”
Here we go. “The document’s been altered.”
“How do you know?”
“That’s Raymond’s signature all right, but my uncle keeled over from a heart attack three years ago.”
“What the fuck is going on here, Sinjin?”
“You want answers?” Taking Breanna by the hand, he led her down the hallway. “You’re going to have to trust me.”
“You don’t trust me.” She stopped dead in her tracks. “Why should I trust you?”
“You shouldn’t.” His thumb brushed across her cheek, and he smirked. “But listen to your gut. It won’t lie.”
At the landing, Breanna followed him up to the third floor. She held onto his arm, her fingers digging into the muscle, as he fit a key into the lock of the double door that guarded it. “What’s up here?”
“Your grandmother’s name was Kimball before she married Lawrence Dalton,” Ian informed her, opening the door to a long hallway, half the length of the house. “Does it ring a bell?”
“No. Should it?”
“As in the hotel chain.” He shrugged. “Maybe you’re too young to remember—Kimball sold off all their properties by the early 2000s. Think Hilton or Marriott or Hyatt. See, Valerie came from money, she didn’t marry into it, and once, she had plans to turn Dalton House into a bed-and-breakfast—a mountain retreat, of sorts, that never came to be. Anyway, the family’s private apartments are here on this floor.”
“So, the second floor…”
“Was supposed to be for guests,” Ian said, nodding. “She wanted to add cottages, too, after your grandfather had the hunting cabins built.”
“Why didn’t she?”
“Shane died.” With an exhale, he gnawed at his lip. “And everything changed after that.”
For all of us.
