I almost choked on my shrimp. Cressida was going after Beck? What the fuck? Did she have some sort of a firing wish?
“Sleeping with his assistant,” she continued, “taking the girls out of school. That is not the type of environment two girls from the Goodman family should be raised in. A former homeless teen and a cult leader’s son? It’s like a bad Lifetime movie.”
“You’re on thin ice, Cressida,” Beck warned.
She gave him a cold glare. “Go ahead and fire me. I’ll let everyone know that I was illegally dismissed for calling you out for breaking company policy. Have fun with that lawsuit.”
I gaped at her.
“I told you,” Shannyn said to me. “Cressida’s no competition. She made a move on him, and Beck dumped her to the curb.”
Oh shit.
“And for good reason. Is this some sort of payback?” Beck barked at Cressida.
“No, my boyfriend and I—” she rested a hand on my stepfather’s shoulder, which caused me to choke on another shrimp “—talked about it and agreed that we would take in the girls. It’s going to be best for everyone.”
“That will never happen,” Beck snarled.
“It’s up to Ethel,” Cressida said.
“No,” Beck countered. “It’s up to the courts.”
“Right,” I added, “and they’re going to see that Beck is a billionaire and has a nice house, while you—with the way you and Shannyn were spending—probably blew through all of my mom’s life insurance money.”
Alistair’s nostrils flared. “I told her to take on a bigger policy.”
“You don’t have any money?” Ethel asked her son in disbelief. “But what about the inheritance your grandfather left you?”
“He burned through all of it!” Shannyn said angrily. “He was trying to show off to all his rich friends. He only paid for my college and only bought me a house and a car, and I didn’t get anything else. All my other friends from private school get payments from their fathers every month, but I get nothing.”
Spoiled much?I wished I’d had a dad who would buy me a car and a house and pay for college.
“So you’re going to adopt my sisters and what?” Beck growled. “Live in a box?” He huffed a laugh. “Good fucking luck getting a lawyer to argue that. Oh wait, you don’t have the money to pay for it.”
“I will,” my stepfather blustered. “You’ll see!”
I knew from experience that he hated to be mocked. But Beck was not the least bit intimidated by Alistair’s posturing.
“I’ll have the trust fund that Dad left for our sister,” my stepfather retorted. “In the will it said that in the event she hadn’t fully detoxed from the cult, the funds will go to support her children. Which is me. I’m supporting her children along with Cressida, who is a descendant of Alexander Hamilton.”
Ethel was wavering. “Beck has done well with the girls,” she said slowly.
“But Tess hasn’t,” Cressida argued. “Look at her. Where did you buy those clothes, a thrift shop?”
“You do seem to be struggling with fashion, dear,” Ethel said.
“Tess isn’t the problem,” my stepfather stormed. “She’s useless and irrelevant. She’s probably being manipulated by him!” Alistair pointed at Beck. “He is his father’s son. You can’t let the girls grow up in that type of environment. They need to be around people of their own social class and stay far away from the desert cult. Who knows? Maybe Beck’s just priming them to be married off, and we’ll never see them again.”
“Do not,” Beck said, voice icy, “insinuate that I have anything except for my sisters’ best interests in mind. Ethel, I allowed the girls to see you as a formality, to try and keep the transition process as smooth as possible. However, I see now that is a mistake. You can consider our Friday-night dinner agreement over.”
53
Beck
“How could you not tell me?” I raged at Tess when we were in the car on the way back to Manhattan.
“I didn’t know,” she said quietly.
