“It all happened, Spencer. Now shut the fuck up.” Kara was staring at their mother like she wanted to kill her. At least she wasn’t holding the gun anymore. It lay on the table beside her purse.
“You tried to shoot me,” Liam said to Kara, his eyes on the gun.
“So?” She stared at him impassively, as if the idea still seemed like a good one to her. Fuck, he’d thought she was distant and aloof before. Not exactly sisterly, but now he realized she was a sociopath.
“After what happened today, Liam, I think we can all agree the situation got out of hand. Let’s just move beyond it,” Spencer said.
“Move beyond it? You told Kara to shoot me.”
“I was triggered!” He spread his hands. “The way Mom sprang all that stuff on us. You understand, right?”
Liam stared at his mother, her fist still clenched around the coin. “You’ve been planning this for some time, haven’t you?”
His mother snorted. “Since your father died and he told me on his deathbed that it was all true. He laughed, you know. Thought he was really sticking it to me. We hated each other by the end.”
Liam looked from his sister to his brother to his mother and felt no attachment whatsoever. These people didn’t care if he lived or died. This was all about them. By giving him a share of the business, she was tying his wealth to theirs. By giving him the cornucopia, she was ensuring their wealth continued indefinitely, and by doing both things in service to Plutus, she ensured her place in the underworld. No one in this room cared about what he did. They didn’t care if he lived or died or saved the planet just as long as he took that ugly-ass centerpiece with him.
And his siblings were willing to kill him over the difference between being billionaires and being marginally wealthier billionaires. Their greed was astounding. He never wanted to have a reason to be in the same room with them again.
The money would be nice.
He could do plenty of good with it.
And he’d never be able to live with himself if he took it.
“I don’t want it,” he said.
“Don’t want what?” his mother asked.
“I don’t want the money, the silent partnership, or the cornucopia. I reject it all. You are not my family.”
The air shimmered with his decision, a pulse coming from the ancient gift at the center of the table. He headed for the door.
“No, no, no!” his mother screamed. “The coin. Liam, the coin is gone! Come back please. I beg you. Liam!”
He accepted his coat from the butler.
“You’ll regret this,” his mother cried from the dining room. “I will ruin you! I will destroy everything you love!”
“You already did,” he muttered, the crushing truth that Charlotte was really gone settling over him.
Back in his tiny Lake View apartment four days later, Liam bit into one of the chocolate chip cookies Charlotte and he had made and tried to hold himself together. He’d been saving them like some kind of shrine to her, but they were going to go stale soon, and the last thing he wanted was to throw them away. They tasted good but turned to ash in his mouth as he thought about Charlotte. Why had he taken her to meet his family? He should have played it safe, hidden her here for as long as he could have gotten away with it.
God, he missed her. Even burying himself in his work hadn’t helped this time. He couldn’t stop thinking about her.
He grabbed the bottle of bourbon from the top of the fridge and poured himself a glass, washing down the cookie with a healthy swig. He wasn’t sure how he was going to survive this world without her, now truly alone as he was, but he guessed there would be a lot of bourbon involved.
A knock came on the door. Probably Mrs. Thornton with his mail again. You’d think the damned post office would learn to read an address. But when he unlocked the door, death was waiting for him on the other side. He tried to close it again, but the man’s hand shot out and held it open.
“Hello, Liam,” Charlotte’s father said.
Liam raised both hands in front of him. “She’s not here. Mr. Uh…?”
“Gabriel. Call me Gabriel.”
“Gabriel.”
“I know she’s not here. I just left her in Paragon. In that timeline, she’s just returned from Christmas with your family.”
