There was no comparison, even before Ritchie had kidnapped her. From the moment she’d met Ghost, she’d known. She just might have been too stubborn to listen at first.
But learning thatRitchiehad never loved her. That their marriage had been some sort of plot that he’d messed up by getting trashed the morning of their wedding…? It didn’t hurt in a heartbreak sort of way, but in a shame sort of way. Because she’d fallen for it. She’d believed that Ritchie loved her. And now he was showing her his true colors, and fucking hell, Becks didn’t know she could hate someone as much as she hated Richard Austin right now.
“You have no idea what you’re talking about? If that fucking man hadn’t been there, none of this would be happening! She probably offered to pay him!”
Did he mean Ghost? Like she’d chosen some random Joe Schmoe off the streets to marry when Ritchie hadn’t shown up? And pay him, as if that was the only way someone would marry her?
Becks got to her feet, because she was so tired of trying to piece together just what the fuck was going on. She was not about to sacrifice herself to save her brother without knowing all the information.
“What are you talking about?” she asked Ritchie. He spun back around to face her, and she noticed just how dilated his eyes were. Yeah, he was definitely on something. “I’m not swimming in riches, and neither is Liam.”
Cameron threw her head back and laughed like the evil bitch she was. “She doesn’t even know!”
Ritchie backhanded Cameron, which Becks really shouldn’t have found so satisfying. But the look of surprise and hurt on Cameron’s face was priceless. “Of course she doesn’t know, you fucking moron! We forged their signatures, remember? So they wouldn’t be ‘suspicious’,” he made air quotes when he said the word, “when one of them died before the other.”
Becks frowned. Forged their signatures on what?
Ritchie turned back to Becks. “Grandma Bertha left you quite an inheritance. Split her entire three-point-six million between her two precious grandchildren.” He gestured between Becks and Liam behind him.
Becks’ jaw dropped. “No,” she argued automatically. “No, she said she was going to leave it to charity.”
Ritchie’s jaw twitched. “You forget who I used to work with beforeyougot me fucking fired! I worked under the attorney who helped secure your grandmother’s estate when I was little more than a junior associate. And the way she talked about you…?” He looked Becks up and down, clearly unimpressed. “I knew you’d be easy pickings, but I had noideajust how easy. Now that one,” he threw his thumb over his shoulder at Liam. “At least he put up a bit of a fight. Made it so challenging that my sister, who literally will spread her legs for anyone,” he ignored Cameron’s outraged gasp, “couldn’t get him to agree to marriage.”
Becks spoke over Cameron when she made a protesting sound. “Grandma left Liam and me her inheritance, and the two of you did all this to gain access to it?”
Ritchie smiled at her, clearly pleased with his own ingeniousness. “I told you once before, baby, I play the long game.”
He had, but that was in reference to poker, if she remembered correctly. Becks looked at her brother, who had his head leaning back against the concrete wall behind him and was staring unseeingly at the ceiling above them.
Money. All this was about money. Ritchie had dated her for a year and a half, and almost married her, just to get his hands on an inheritance she hadn’t even had yet. A thought occurred to her then. “Grandma? Did you kill her?”
Ritchie snorted. “No, that was just bad timing on her part. Couldn’t have you learning about her money before you tied the knot, now could I?”
Bad timing? Had he really just called her grandmother’s passingbad timing? Then again, given where she and Liam were, was she all that surprised he was so heartless?
Her mind worked fast, trying to think through the possibilities of everything she just learned. “I’ll sign the money over to you. There’s no need to kill either of us. We have full control over both our accounts, so I can give you anything you want.”
“And come after us for kidnapping?” Ritchie snorted. “I don’t think so.”
“Then go somewhere the law can’t find you! You’ll have almost four million dollars at your disposal. Go to a non-extradition country and set yourselves up on a beach somewhere.” Becks didn’t care how desperate she sounded. She wasn’t a martyr. If she could get both herandLiam out of this alive, she would.
“You’re forgetting one thing, you fat pig,” Cameron snapped, hands on her hips. “We made it look like Ranger is dead. Meaning, his money is now your money. Can’t have both of you showing up alive or your signature on his half means nothing.”
Becks had no idea how inheritances or estates or any of this worked. She wasn’t an attorney, nor did she have enough knowledge about trusts to know what was legal and what wasn’t.
She looked to Ritchie. He had lied about a lot of things, but she knew for a fact that he was a successful lawyer. She’d been to his office parties with him, met his bosses, and had been inside his office. He could fool her into thinking he loved her, but she wasn’t so dense that she wouldn’t have seen through that ruse. Too many people would have had to have been involved to pull something like that off.
Her current, unadulterated hatred of Ritchie did not negate how smart the man clearly was. He couldn’t have lied or faked his way into one of the most prestigious law firms in Atlanta. But damn, was he a good actor. She didn’t know when his drug usage had started, but had trouble believing he got hooked the morning of their botched wedding. She also had a hard time believing his Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde personality swap was drug related, and believed the man to just be a superb actor.
It still grossed her out that she’d fallen for it and had allowed him not only into her heart, but also her body. She may not have loved him, but she had cared for him, or thehimshe had believed Ritchie to be.
She hoped all her years of studying movies, actors, and working in the industry had lent her even some of that skill, because if there ever was a time that she needed to get away with a lie, it was now.
“I’m Liam’s Power of Attorney.” She wasn’t. As far as she knew, that was their mother, and she hoped, prayed, and pleaded with the universe that there wasn’t an easy way for Ritchie to do a quickGooglesearch and disprove her. “He switched it to me after Dad died. Mom was in no position to deal with it, and he needed to name someone before being deployedagain. Even after he left the military, he never changed it. Alive or dead, I have control over his finances and medical decisions.”
Ritchie’s eyes narrowed. “You never told me that.”
“Until this very moment, I forgot!” she argued, talking out of her ass. “He was retired from the military, and I never had to use it.”
