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“We got them all,” I confirm.
“What now?” Tally asks the question I’m sure we’re all thinking.
“Now we start a coup,” Olly says. “The annual shareholders meeting is in less than two weeks’ time. We’ll attend the meeting and submit a formal request to remove your father as a director. Assuming that the inheritance hasn’t been handed over to whoever gets the money now, we should be the majority in attendance and should be able to get the decision pushed through with the Archibald Inc lawyers.”
“Then what?” I ask, looking to my girl. “Do we just walk away?”
“That’s up to Carrigan and Tally. We have the sex tapes we can use, plus the rest of the paperwork we haven’t been through yet, there might be something else we can leak to the press in there,” Olly says.
“Where is all the rest of the stuff we took from the girls’ house?” Arlo asks.
“It’s still in the case in the back of our closet,” I tell him, jumping up and jogging toward our room. Grabbing the small carry-on case, I smile as I look at how full our closet is. All of Priss’s things are hanging next to mine, her shoes on the racks, her makeup and jewelry filling the shelves, she’s settled in and made this place her home. I know we’ll be leaving for Cornell soon, but this boat, my favourite place in the world, will always be full of her now too, my favourite person and my favourite place all blended together in the perfect mix of freedom and home.
Sighing, I can’t help the huge smile on my face as I walk back into the living room, place the case down onto the coffee table, and open it. “Here, everyone take a pile and start looking through it,” I say, pulling out handfuls of paperwork and passing them out to everyone.
The room falls silent, except for the sounds of shuffling papers as we all concentrate. “I have lists of investments,” I say, looking up from the paper in my hands. “Looks like your dad bought shares in the companies of his top ten son in law choices,” I sneer.
“How much Lexington stock does he own?” Arlo asks.
“Not too much,” I say, handing the stock order over to him and placing the others on the floor at my feet.
“Jewelry,” Wats says.
Looking up I find him holding a black velvet jewelry box in each hand.
“I found those in Mom’s safe, I’m guessing since they’re identical they’re actually mine and Tally’s,” Priss says. “Our passports and birth certificates are in there too.”
Wats throws the box at Priss and she grabs it from the air and opens it. Peering around her I see a large diamond hanging from a simple gold chain nestled against the black satin of the box.
“Here,” he says, throwing her passport and birth certificate at her next. “Hey there’s something else in here too.”
Opening the passport, her face twists into a grimace and she closes it again, glancing at the birth certificate next, then placing them both on the floor with the necklace.
“Hey this is a letter addressed to you, Crueligan,” Wats says, holding up a sealed envelope in his hands, her name written in swirling black ink across the front.
Glancing at Priss I watch as the color drains from her face as she stands a little shakily and crosses the room, taking the envelope from Watson’s hands and running her finger across her name. “This is from my great-grandfather,” she says almost absently as her wide eyes look to me.
“Open it,” Arlo orders.
As we all silently watch, her fingers slide beneath the seal, then she pauses, lifting the envelope up a little closer to her face and examining it. “This has been opened already and then pressed closed again, I can feel the hardened glue.”
“What does it say?” Tally asks.
Puling the thick sheets of paper free, she lets the envelope fall to the ground and starts to read. For a few long moments she scans the letter, her face twisting into an expression of confusion until her lips part and a whoosh of shocked air bursts from her.
“What does it say?” I ask.
“It says…”
Trailing off she hands the letter to me and then sits down in my lap, her chest resting against mine, like she needs the support. Lifting the letter up, I scan the contents and then begin to read it aloud.
Dear Carrigan,
I’m hoping you won’t ever read this letter, because if you are it means all of my hopes and good intentions have failed.
When I wrote the set of rules that I asked you to live by, I did it truly hoping that it would help mold you into a person worthy of deserving my fortune. I created a guideline to help stop you straying from the honorable path, to help you create a future for yourself and all future generations to aspire toward.
I’m on old man, but I’m not ignorant to the fact that the world we live in can be ruthless and hard on soft, weak females, and that is why I want you to find a husband who would also be tied to my expectations of moral fortitude. The Archibald name used to mean something, it used to scream hardworking, resilient, proud, and I want it to mean those things again.
