Page 41 of Get A Fix

“He was tired of it. He wanted to sail around the world with his new wife, Terese.”

“New?”

“Yes.”

“How many has he had?”

He thought a moment. “Terese was his seventh and last.”

“Wow.”

“Wow is right. She’s also younger than me.”

“You’re only thirty-six.”

“Yep.”

“Holy crap.”

He waggled his eyebrows. “Listen, I didn’t care, but his ex-wives and their children certainly did.”

“She was in his will too, I’m guessing?”

“Oh yes. Another slice of the pie. No one was happy.”

“Okay, so for the million-dollar question, why you? Why did he want you to be executor?”

“I asked him the same when he put me in charge, and he said it’s because I wasn’t attached to the money.”

“Which makes sense if you think about it. You have your own, you don’t need his, and you didn’t grow up with a silver spoon.”

“I have a theory that he also did it to piss them all off. He wasn’t close to any of his sons or daughters. He thought they were all jackals.”

“Are they?”

He shrugged. “I can’t say, and more importantly, I don’t care. All I know is that in the beginning, I had to deal with all of them for a couple of years before he died.”

“Again, I’m sorry he passed.”

“It’s fine. I went to the funeral, and before the man was even in the ground, they were all circling, wanting to know what they would get.”

“Was he still married to Terese when he died?”

“He was, but she was smart enough to know that she was getting her portion and that was all, and to ask for anything more was an exercise in futility. She had no interest in fighting; she just wanted her piece.”

“She didn’t love him?”

“I think she liked him more than some of his other wives, and they were friends and laughed a lot. Companionship was what he was looking for by then, and she is a stunningly beautiful woman. He hit the jackpot marrying her.”

“Good.”

“She has her own makeup line now, and it’s doing really well. She remarried a duke or something, and they live in Paris with their three kids.”

“Good for her.”

He nodded.

“What happened after your father died?”