I snatched the packet up.
Absolutely fucking not.
“Two,” Steele went on. “She’s requesting compensation for moving to the States while she searches for a sponsor for citizenship.”
Unfuckingbelievable.
“Why not stay in your country? Why come here? Is there family over here?”
She shook her head, her accent thick as she spoke. “No. No family. All back in Russia.”
Looking over to Ted, I said, “She’s not getting past the front gate.”
“We’re willing to negotiate which portion of the estate she’s interested in,” Steele said.
I turned to look at him next. “I don’t care if she’s looking to simply take over the garage for an art studio. It’s not happening. She can find herself an apartment with the money that’s being put on the table.”
Ted slapped a hand down on my shoulder, silencing me with a tight squeeze. “What Mr. McAllister is trying to say, is that there’s no reason for Ms. Liapovich to move into the estate when there are plenty of other accommodations in Ellington Heights that are just as nice. The estate is afamilyhome.”
“Yes. Family,” Ana stated, placing a hand over her stomach that I hadn’t noticed was swollen until this very moment. “It’s perfect for the baby.”
The entire room fell dead silent.
Ana’s attention flitted between all of us, her brows growing more furrowed the longer none of us talked.
“I’m sorry,” Ted let out a strained laugh. “Baby?”
Steele cleared his throat, pulling out another set of papers from his stack and passed it over to us. “Yes, my client is just under six months pregnant.”
I didn’t need to look down at the paper in front of me to know that it was a medical form reiterating what the fuck just came out of this woman’s mouth. Or that at the top of it would be her first name with my last name attached to it.
My chest squeezed with anger, barely contained while I hung on by a thread. She was watching me again with that carefully guarded expression, her hand curling protectively over her belly.
He was supposed to be sniped. He’d bragged about it weeks before my mother’s untimely death and had practically celebrated the opportunity to jet set around the world on an international sexcapade.
Reversing it after twenty-six years... was that even possible?
“I want a paternity test.”
She frowned at me. “It is his.”
My jaw ached from how hard I was clenching my teeth. “Iwanta paternity test.”
There was no way I was going to be forced to accept this baby as my sibling.Iwas my father’s only child.Iwas the sole beneficiary to his entire estate and legacy. I’d been put through the fucking gauntlet and come out the other side a better man than my father ever was.
This woman was lying and I was going to prove it.
A sibling at the ripe age of thirty-four. No fucking way.
“I’m not willing to negotiate anything else until a test is done,” I said, shoving my chair back from the table.
“We can wait until after the baby is born,” Steele suggested.
“Then we’ll be putting all of this on the back burner until then. There are plenty of tests that are non-invasive if you don’t wish to go down that road. But like I said, I’m not negotiating further until this is proven to be my father’s child.”
Because if, god forbid, Anawascarrying my sibling, then we’d be forced to stop all of this anyway and reevaluate the will altogether. Maybe even having to get a judge involved if it came down to Ana fighting me on every little thing she wanted her baby to be entitled to.
The unfortunate part about my father’s will was that the language had been ambiguous enough to allow for loopholes like this. Stating all of his ‘naturally born children’ were to receive the inheritance with no language statinghowit was supposed to be split up in the end.
