“Did you write that in your diary afterward?” Mark quipped, clutching his chest in mock anguish.
I grabbed a pillow from the floor and hurled at him, but he ducked, cackling like a madman.
“This isn’t funny!” I barked, throwing my hands in the air and slamming the footrest down. “She doesn’t deserve a coward. She deserves better.”
The laughter died as Magnum leaned forward on the sofa, elbows on his knees. He turned to face me, as Miller did the same, voice dropping to something cool and serious. “Maverick. We all miss her. Autumn was our family long before you got married. But you’re not honoring her memory by staying miserable. You think Summer doesn’t understand your grief?She may not have had a spouse die, but her marriage ended in a flaming pile of dog shit.”
“Yeah, brother. Why won’t you let yourself have the damn good thing that was standing right in front of you?”
“We know you love her,” Mark said, hovering over the recliner with his hands on his hips. “You’re just scared you’ll bury her too.”
“And we all have that fear. It’s not something that goes away. But I’d never give up Brooke just because I might lose her one day,” Magnum said.
“Also, and I mean this with love, bro—if you don’t show up to the courthouse, I will personally drag your sorry ass there in my underwear. And you know I’ll do it,” Miller said, grinning. “After all, we have a cop in the family to make that infraction go away.”
“Don’t use me as your one phone call if you get arrested for public indecency,” Mark said, shaking his head.
“Fuck, you three are impossible,” I groaned.
“That’s brotherhood,” Magnum said, pulling me from the recliner and slapping my shoulder. “Now go shave, shower, put on an actual shirt, and stop being a douche. You have a woman to win back.”
“Shut up,” I said as my lips twitched, just barely, toward a smile.
Chapter 35
The cold courtroomsmelled faintly of wood polish and old newspapers, a scent heavy with years of judgment. Every creak of the hard, wooden benches echoed in the quiet spaceas the judge sat like a stone sentinel, gavel resting ominously beside him, ready to hear the final arguments.
The tension was palpable as my fingers curled tightly around the gold chain my parents got me for my twenty-first birthday, twisting the delicate metal to ease my anxiety as I sat at the defendant’s table. Dad cleared his throat behind me, but I didn’t turn around, too caught up in the moment and feeling like a sopping wet blanket was wrapped around my already frozen body.
This was awful—not just the hearing, but everything that led up to it. Me anxiously pacing outside until Dad had to all but drag me up the stairs. Turning around every fifteen seconds in the hopes I’d see Maverick towering over the other spectators in the courtroom. The not-so-subtle scoffing and throat clearing from Trey’s heavily pregnant fiancée as she kept adjusting her posture on the benches.
The culmination of everything that led to this moment made me want to crawl under a goose down comforter and hibernate until spring. But then I remembered Aunt Camilla—a woman I’d never gotten the chance to know, but who wanted me to benefit from the life she’d led—and knew that I owed it to her to fight.
This was more than an inheritance. This was me standing up to a bully and closing the door to that part of my past. Taking back my independence and self-respect.
Sure, since I gave Trey the house, the funds were something I desperately needed to ease my burden and find a place close to Dad. But mostly, it was about principle—about protecting the gift my aunt passed along. It was about holding onto family, about honoring a woman I never knew, but who still deserved to have her legacy preserved.
The gavel banged and the judge called court back in session, so I steadied my breathing to focus on closing statements. I couldn’t help but side-eye Trey, the douche, without turningmy head. He looked immaculate as always in his custom suit, polished cufflinks, and a smirk that made me cringe. He’d started this nonsense, filing the suit claiming that my inheritance belonged to him by marital right, but I’d end it today, showing him I was anything but a doormat.
“Ms. Winston?” my attorney, Vanessa, said quietly. “It’s almost over.”
Almost.
The hours of testimony had been a blur—documents, wills, witnesses who remembered what we were like when married. Financial forensics combing through our failed marriage, checking off boxes in the hopes it would lead to a definite decision. The sting of the morning had come with Trey’s testimony. He answered the questions asked with charm, twisting our shared history into something that made me look like a woman scorned.
The judge shuffled the papers before him, and the room went so still I could hear my heartbeat. It sounded like a drum, thumping to a tempo no one else knew. “Mr. Grant, you may proceed with your closing argument.”
Trey’s slimy lawyer stood, adjusting his tie and stepping around the table. “Thank you, Your Honor. This case isn’t about greed—”
“He’s lying already,” I whispered to Vanessa, who jotted something down on her yellow legal pad and nodded.
“I know. Let him dig his hole.”
“—it’s about fairness. Mr. Jordan supported his wife throughout the years of their marriage, including when she inherited this estate. Without his contribution, her lifestyle would not have been possible.”
“Aunt Camilla left that to me, not us. We’d never met and she had no idea that I’d even been married,” I said through gritted teeth, clenching my fists in my lap so tightly, my nails dug intomy palms. The sharp pain helped me see through the fog of bitterness, until Trey’s voice cut across the courtroom.
“And we were married at the time, Summer. What’s yours was ours. That was your saying, remember?”
