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“I work for the law firm…I did work for the law firm that was in charge of the estate of your family. I retired this morning, effective immediately.” She asked him what that had to do with anything. “Everything. I’m the one who sent in the DNA test to that website. I’m the one that found out that you…you had a great deal of family, dear, that has been killed off in the name of greed.”
“Maybe you should start at the beginning, Daniel. She looks as confused as I was when you told me what you’d done.” Storm looked at her. “I’d never harm you, child. I want you to know that I’d very much like to be your friend if that’s all you can give me. I know that you’re afraid of me, with good reason. I’m a bitch.” Layla burst out laughing. “There you go. Now, we’ll order, have us—oh good. They’re going to move us the a private room. How wonderful of them.”
She had a feeling that they’d had a great deal to do with the expansion of this restaurant and the quality of the people who worked there. When Storm winked at her, she smiled again. It was, she realized something that she’d been out of the habit of doing for a long time.
After Daniel explained about how he’d seen the file that had been hidden with another file that he’d needed, he saw that the younger woman was Layla’s twin. He handed her a picture.
“I nearly had myself a cow when I saw the picture. The grandmother there, she was young when your parents had them. She’d only just turned forty when you two were born.” She asked him why they’d been separated. “Your father and mother were about as paranoid as they could be and decided that they’d be able to keep you—as I said to you before, I didn’t understand most of what was said in the papers. However, you come from old money. And a great deal of it. Also, I should point out that you were living with your biological father while your sister, Abbigal, lived with your biological mother. And Abbigal, what she was called from birth, had a terrible life while living with her and your stepfather. I do believe when they were killed, and she went to live with your grandmother, that she had a better life. Compared to yours.”
“I didn’t exactly have a walk in the park, you know.” He told her some of the things that had been done to her sister. “Oh. I’m sorry about that. Had I known about her, then I would have gone to get her. I’m sorry for being so flippant. It must have hurt her terribly to be locked in a cage all the time. Do you know if she was smart like I am?”
“No, there was no way to tell as your mother never let her go to school. By the time she was ten years old, she was socially inept as well as didn’t talk well. Your mother and stepfather were the only people that she ever spoke to, and they, for the most part, ignored her. And you should understand that it appears that your grandmother didn’t seem to know that there was another child born of her daughter. She never mentioned you, even in the will that she had when she perished.”
“What did they die of? I’m to understand that they both died at the same time like my grandmother and sister did.” He told her what he’d been able to find out. “Christ, so he shot my mother and then himself? Why? There had to be a good reason, correct?”
“No one knows. He didn’t leave a note, nor did he say anything to anyone before it happened. He didn’t work, not from home or an office. It is believed that he, too, was socially awkward, and when he was told that he’d have to go to board meetings, he flipped out. Not my word but that’s what I heard. And the reason that it is figured that he didn’t kill Abbigal is, as I said, he didn’t interact with her much, and it was assumed that he’d forgotten about her.”
Layla looked at the picture. She could tell now that her sister—a sister that she never knew wasn’t thrilled about having her picture taken. As the conversation went on around her, she tried to think if she’d ever had any indication of having a sister. Or, for that matter, a close relationship with her father. Then she thought of something.
“When I was about fifteen, right around the time that I’m assuming that my mother was killed, my dad locked himself in his bedroom and didn’t come out for days. Now that I think about that, my father was killed a year later. I bet if I thought about it, it would have been the anniversary of my mother’s death. Christ, they were more fucked up than anyone I’ve ever dealt with in the hospital setting.” David told her that she was correct. It was exactly that date. “So what happened? I’m assuming that something happened that killed my grandmother and sister. I find that I really don’t want to know and find that I need to know.”
When Madison took her hand into his, she held tightly to his while the others looked at one another. Layla didn’t know why but she thought that they were having the same feelings. That they needed to tell her but really didn’t want to. She told Storm to tell her.
“They were murdered.” She’d thought that but had never voiced it before. “The car accident was staged to make it seem like her brakes went out. I know that it wasn’t an accident when I read that your grandmother, whose name was Layla Abbigal, by the way, had taken your sister out of the home she’d been living in to go shopping. It wasn’t anything that that Abbigal could have done and your grandmother didn’t drive. None of the pieces of the puzzle line up to make any of that true. I believe that the attorneys were sick of waiting for them to die so that they’d get the money. It was supposed to be dispersed to a list of charities, but I doubt that it would have gone anywhere but in the firm’s key player’s pockets. That’s why I sent in your DNA. By the will, they had to search for a relative before they got the money. That’s when you turned up. And the reason they had to make a reasonable effort to find you is they hired someone to kill you.” She asked Storm if anyone had looked into their deaths. “They are now. All of their deaths. I believe that they had a part in all their deaths in some form.”
“What happens now? I mean, there can’t be too much left after I was given that check.” Madison laughed, and so did his parents. “I take it that would be wrong on my part.”
“Very much so. You’re the last surviving member of your family. So you get it all. Your grandmother’s and both your parents’ separate monies, as well as your sister’s portion too. Your family was an odd bunch but they knew how to turn a buck into a million better than anyone I’ve ever seen. Your estate, as of yesterday, is worth billions and billions of dollars. And, well, I hate to say this because I know how cruel it sounds. You’ll get double that if it can be proven that they were murdered. And I believe that they were.”
Layla didn’t know when she’d eaten her food. It must have been good, as there wasn’t even a small pea on her plate. The others, talking around the table, hadn’t said anything directly to her until now. And it was Amy that brought her out of her stupor.
“You all right now?” She wondered aloud how she would feel if she’d just found out about her family being murdered. “Just as you are taking it. I don’t know a great deal about you but I have a feeling that this is unusual for you, you know, lacking in response.”
“I suppose you’re right. I do usually have something to say.” They both laughed, and she realized that Madison was at the other end of the table talking to his brothers. “I don’t know what to do with him. Or for him. I’ve had such a fucked up time over the last couple of years that I can’t take one more thing from anyone right now.”
“Understandable. Not to be incentive about shit, Madison can and will help you with whatever you need.” She told the other woman that she didn’t have any idea what she needed. “Hey, I was right there with you when I came to this family. They’re huge, wealthy, and loving. This is just a suggestion for you but if you were to share with him about the stuff you have going on, I promise you that he’d lift things off your shoulders and not ever hold it over your head like most men I know. Getting with him couldn’t be better, by the way, either. And after you have sex with him…good golly, as I’ve heard Alex say, it’ll be fantastic. His brother and I had a very rocky start. Well, it was horrific there for a while but he’s come around in behaving himself. It was touch and go there for a while that I might well have killed him off. Or had him killed. I think that all of the sons were like that when I first arrived. Especially Madison and Fowler. Being the oldest, I guess he had a stunned childhood or something. Not from his parents. They couldn’t understand him either.”
“Yes, well, I don’t understand the lot of them. I’ve been around not as long as he’s been. But I know that ‘getting with him,’ as you put it, would make me all the much stronger. However, as I said, I’m overwhelmed.” Nodding, she said that she could understand that as well. “How much did I miss when I zoned out? I’m betting they have accomplished a great deal on their own.”
“No, not really. They’ll leave any decisions that you should be making left up to you. Storm can be a tad—no, that’s not right, she is bitchy, but she has a wonderful heart when it comes to welcoming you into the family. And I love Alex. He’s not at all like I imagined a vampire to be.” They both looked at the man they were speaking about when he threw back his head and laughed. The rest of the table did as well. “One of the ones that you have to agree to is having the bodies of your family exhumed. And a thorough examination done of them. It’s not even for the money, I would imagine that you’d say, but for the simple reason that someone needs to pay for what was done to them.”
Amy laid the paperwork in front of her in a thick file and then left her. Looking at the paperwork, there were several places that she needed to sign off on and each one of the names on the paperwork was like a stab to the heart. She didn’t know any of these people, not even her own father and stepmother. But she did sign where the tabs were before looking at the rest of the things in the file.
She felt like she was knee-deep into everything that she didn’t understand when Madison asked her if she needed help. Shoving the papers in his direction, he laughed. He told her that he’d help her to understand whatever it was that she didn’t.
“What does it mean here about the check? The forty million that I’ve only just realized is still in my backpack?” He told her that the firm was hoping that she’d be thrilled with that much money and not check in on the rest. “So it was like get your face out of your own business. Okay, I might well have done that if not for you. In fact, I wouldn’t even have this much if not for you.”
“You do understand that I didn’t do it out of the goodness of my heart. Right? I was still in my prick stage and did it for meanness.” She said that she’d understood that. “Yes, well, I didn’t want you to think that I was anything but an asshole back then.”
“What makes you think that I don’t think of you as an asshole now?” He laughed and said that she had wounded him. “Not that it matters all that much, I guess, but did you really do this to make me more upset? How did you figure that was going to happen when I’m forty million dollars richer?”
“I don’t know, to be honest.” He helped her with the wording in the file on a great many of the pages. He was doing a good job at it, telling her what they meant and what it meant in the circumstances in which it was being used in the paperwork. By the time they’d gone through about half the work, she had a better understanding of how she’d been swindled. And it pissed her off more.
“Where do we go from here now that I’ve signed off on the exhumation paperwork?” He told her what he knew, which seemed like a great deal to her. “So I have to keep in mind that this isn’t a guaranteed win. However it does look good for my table. Another thing is, I need to pay off some of my parents’ debt with that check you gave me.”
“No, you don’t. As I said to you the other day, the law firm of Schuster and Schuster isn’t doing good for a lot of people that they were hired to take care of. Your parents, none of them had any debt. Much like you, they either paid cash for something or they didn’t get it. So whatever you’ve paid them for this supposed debt is a lie. Nowhere has my mom or anyone in the family been able to find where they owed anyone for anything. We’ll get all that money back for you as well.” She laid her head down on the table as he continued to tell her all the things that she’d been doing in the name of her parent’s debt. “There was no hospital bill, no funeral bill. There was nothing that was owed on their homes. Even your grandmother owned her own home that she and your sister lived in before she was taken to the home to help her with her anxieties. That was paid monthly by your parents, each of them paying half the balance, so she’d never been a burden to anyone. If they suggested that your family, any of them had any credit card debt? There isn’t anything like that.”
“They had me paying hundreds of thousands of dollars every year. For all the things that you’ve listed and more.” Madison nodded. “How the hell did they get away with that for so long?”
