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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 from straying from the honorable path, to help you create a future for yourself and all future generations to aspire toward.
I’m an 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 Rhodes name used to mean something, it used to scream hard work, resilience, and pride, and I want it to mean those things again.
If you’re reading this letter, it means that you have fallen from the path I set forward for you, and as such, you believe that you have forfeited your chance to inherit. I’m writing to let you know that, depending on the circumstances, that might not be the case.
In my previous letter to you, I listed nine rules to guide your future, and if you have failed to meet those expectations from sheer lack of will and a weak nature, then my estate will be passed along to your sister, who will then be expected to abide by the same rules that you were unable to adhere to. If this is the case, then I hope she is more capable of honoring our family’s name than you have proven yourself to be.
However, I left in a few clauses that could circumnavigate the original terms I put forth. If you have waited until you are twenty-five and have chosen to walk away from my estate, then I applaud you, and the money is still yours to enjoy as you see fit. I feel that if you have made it to this age without having broken the stipulations, then you are already the type of person whom I would be proud to call my family. I advise you to invest wisely, work hard, and leave a legacy that your children will be proud of.
Alternatively, if you have deliberately broken one of the stipulations of inheritance in order to release yourself from the obligations of my will, then I have left the redistribution of my wealth in the hands of my good friend and trusted lawyer, Andrew Stanton. He will assess your reasoning for breaking the will and move forward in accordance with my guidelines as he sees fit.
Regardless of how this letter comes to be in your possession, I wish you health, happiness, and prosperity for your future life.
Kind regards,
Reginald Rhodes the Second
“So, who gets the money?” Davis asks.
“I’m not sure,” Penelope answers, her voice a little dazed.
“Is this guy the lawyer you saw when you first broke the will? Wouldn’t he have told you if you were still going to inherit?” Gulliver asks her.
“No, I saw Mr. Kingston. Maybe he decided my reasoning for wanting out wasn’t good enough, or maybe whoever gets it after me was better suited,” she says with a shrug.
“You need to go and see him,” Kip declares, excitement lacing his voice.
Her entire body tenses. “Why?” she asks, incredulous.
“Because if you still get that money, your parents are going to drop dead on the spot, and if you don’t, perhaps you’ll be able to find out who does and who we’ll be up against at the shareholders meeting,” Kip says, practically bouncing with excitement.
“You need to go and see the lawyer, Princess,” I tell her, hating that her great-grandfather is still fucking with her, even after everything she’s done to free herself of him.
“I don’t want the money,” she says, her voice a little too loud.
“I don’t care about the money, you can give it all away,” I say, cupping her cheek in my palm. “You wanted revenge, and this would be the ultimate revenge. Can you imagine your parents’ faces?” I say, watching the heat flare in her eyes.
“You wouldn’t care if I gave it all away?” she asks.
“If you want, we can go up to the top of the Empire State Building and make it rain money from the roof with every single penny.” I laugh.
Her teeth worry her full lower lip as she swallows and then nods. “We’ll go and see him tomorrow.”
36
PENELOPE
How did I go from being normal to a fourteen-year-old almost worth a fortune, to a worthless eighteen-year-old, and now back to possibly being worth a fortune again in just four years?
I wish I could bring my great-grandfather back from the dead and demand to know exactly what the hell he thought he was playing at with this godforsaken will he wrote. I’d love to really understand what he hoped to achieve. Was he just so narrow-minded that he thought he could brandish his money like a carrot to a donkey and we’d all just fall into line?
I imagine that’s probably exactly what he thought, because that’s what he did, and it worked, at least for a while. Did he understand who his grandson was and the position of power he was putting him in when he left me all that money when I was still a child? Did he expect them to manipulate me, to use me, and to break me as a way of accessing the inheritance? Was that his plan all along?
My mind plays over a thousand possibilities on the drive over to the lawyer’s office, but the only real conclusion I can come to is that my great-grandfather was an asshole. He used his money to play with all of our lives. He overlooked his only son and his only grandson and left all his money to me.
But the ironic thing is that my grandfather is really the only one who’s dealt with this whole situation with any dignity. He disputed the will to start off with, but when the courts told him the will would stand, that the money was mine, he just walked away. He and my grandmother just carried on living their lives in their homes in New York, the Hamptons, and Martha’s Vineyard. I didn’t see them before, I don’t see them now, and I have so much more respect for them because of that.
I don’t know what I want the lawyer to tell me today. Inheriting the Rhodes fortune with no stipulations would be the ultimate revenge on my parents, but the truth is, I don’t think I want the money. It’s tainted by all the sins I committed in its pursuit, and I don’t want that on my conscience again.
