“My father’s will?”
“Yes,” Marcus said.
“He was afraid that there would be an uprising if it wasn’t read immediately?”
“Yes, Mr. Accardi,” Marcus said, never looking away from Romeo. “He was.”
Normally, Heather would’ve enjoyed watching somebody stand up to Romeo, but her chest still felt like a hollow cavity. Enjoyment was a distant thought.
They went with the attorney into the dining room. They sat at the table, and he read out very plainly the terms of the will. Romeo’s mother was to get a stipend, relatively limited, but certainly enough. And the rest was to be split evenly between Romeo and herself. Including Accardi Industries.
“That’s outrageous,” Romeo said. “Heather is not part of the day-to-day running of the company.”
“This is not up for debate.”
“She was anEnglish major,” Romeo said, with the same disdainful tone he might have used if he’d called her a garbage collector.
“These are the terms of the will,” the lawyer said.
“You got your way,” Romeo said.
“I don’t want it,” Heather said, seeing it as simply another chain tying her to him.
“Will you sign it over to me?”
“Yes,” she said. “For the monetary value.”
“Then it will be done.”
It was a double-edged sword. Trading the Accardi legacy for money meant severing ties she valued but…
She wanted to be free of him. Sheneededto be free of him.
She wanted to have no association with him whatsoever, and being part owner in a company with him was not the way to do that. But she could feel his rage. She knew where it came from. It was because his father had seen them as equal. Because he had given her exactly what he had given to Romeo, and Romeo felt entitled to more. To everything.
“All of the assets are to be divided evenly.”
“Good,” said Romeo. “We will liquidate it all. Everything other than the company, and we will split it. You see to that. I don’t want to see her again. Not after today.”
“You think I want to see you?”
“It’s hard to tell with you.”
“Then let me make it explicit,” she said, holding up her middle finger.
“Do I need to send a police escort to get one of you away from the property?” Marcus asked.
“No,” Romeo said. “Leave us.”
“Yes,” Heather agreed, her pulse pounding. “Leave us.”
Marcus did, even if grudgingly. He kept looking back like he might have to suddenly intervene in a fistfight.
Romeo moved to the double doors of the dining room and closed them in a fluid motion.
“It is settled,” he said. “I’ll buy you out. We liquidate everything. We are not family. The Accardi empire is mine. The Accardi name is mine. It isn’t yours, and it never has been. My father is nothing more than a deluded, sentimental old man who believed that a gold digger—”
“My mother was not a gold digger, and you know it. Your mother is a gold digger, one who is being taken care of, even after your father’s death. You could be angry that they had an affair. I can understand that, but the love story, in the end, was your father and my mother, and that is not ambiguous. Your mother is a selfish, awful woman who has spent years making sure that you don’t get to enjoy your life because you have to do her bidding.” She’d seen the way he acted whenever Carla called or texted. The way he responded to her marching orders, abandoned holidays and family dinners and meetings to go to her.
