I powered up my laptop and began.
First, the assets. Grandfather’s trust fund—ten million dollars, unbreakable except by me and one spectacularly corrupt probate attorney who’d retired to Boca Raton.
Two vacation homes: Maui and Palm Springs, both listed in my name for tax reasons, neither ever actually visited. The condo itself, which I could sell in a heartbeat, though that would attract attention from the family’s army of accountants and informants.
I drew up a spreadsheet, color-coded and obsessively tabbed. For the first time in my life, the numbers didn’t make me feel small. They made me feel, if not powerful, then at least... dangerous.
I called my real estate agent—well, my father’s, but she owed me for not exposing her affair with the condo association president.
“Ms. Liebowitz? It’s Carter. I need to offload two properties. Discretion is not just preferred, it’s mandatory.”
A pause. “I see. What’s your timeline?”
“The quicker, the better. Cash buyers only. And no mention to my father, obviously.”
She coughed delicately, as if to say, “Isn’t it always.”
By the end of the week, she’d moved both properties, “as is,” for just under ten million. She didn’t ask questions. Her wire transfer memo was “consulting fee.”
I took a perverse pleasure in how easy it was to liquidate my life. Maybe I was better at this than I thought.
The next step: disappear. I ran a search on countries with the best privacy laws, cross-referencing them against prenatal healthcare, citizenship options for unwed omegas, and the average temperature in December.
I created a ranking system, assigning point values for “low probability of Steele family infiltration” and “access to goat cheese.” Portugal came out on top, followed by New Zealand and Canada. I’d always liked Portugal, the way the air tasted of salt and old stone.
I booked tickets for a scouting trip—first class, but with a fake surname. I’d never used a fake name before, and it felt like buying drugs from the internet. I used an encrypted email service, paid with a new credit card in the name of “Jameson Carter,” and set up a forwarding address in Toronto, just in case anyone decided to get creative with their subpoenas.
For two weeks, I moved like a ghost in my own home. I packed only what I could carry: laptop, important documents, a few sets of clothes that wouldn’t show the bump for at least another month.
I didn’t tell anyone, not even Vivian, who texted daily with offers to “do brunch and fix your hair, babe.” I ignored the invitations. I ignored Barrett’s emails. I ignored my father’s increasingly terse voicemails, though I did save one where he called me a “liability.” I played it back sometimes, just to remind myself that the world made sense.
I was almost free. Until I got the news alert about Victor Hargrove.
It flashed on my phone between emails: “Montana Cattle Baron Sentenced to Twenty Years for Attempted Murder.”
I almost didn’t recognize the name. Then I remembered: Rawley’s neighbor, the guy who’d tried to sabotage the ranch, the one my brother had mentioned in a rare, unguarded phone call.
I pictured the Hargrove spread, acres of fence-line bristling with security cameras, the house itself a monument to bad taste and new money. I pictured it sitting empty, a giant wound in the landscape.
An idea took root, fragile and absurd, but persistent.
I called a lawyer I trusted—a college friend, the kind of guy who wore Supreme hoodies under his Brooks Brothers jackets. He picked up on the third ring.
“Maxwell,” I said. “I need to buy a property, sight unseen, through a shell company. It has to close yesterday.”
He didn’t even ask why. “Send me the details,” he said. “And don’t use your regular email.”
Within forty-eight hours, the Hargrove ranch was in my portfolio. Technically, it belonged to “Gorey Holdings LLC,” a subsidiary of a trust named after a character from a children’s book. The transfer went through Melissa Hargrove, who was all too eager to liquidate and relocate to Scottsdale with her new tennis pro.
I didn’t tell Rawley. I didn’t tell anyone. I liked knowing that, for the first time in my life, I’d gotten ahead of the family game. No one could buy or threaten or outmaneuver me. Not this time.
I sat at my desk and pulled up the spreadsheet. After taxes, fees, and the Hargrove purchase, I had just over fifteen million dollars at my disposal.
I leaned back in the chair, hands over my stomach. “Not bad for a ghost,” I said, and for once, the echo didn’t sound like a curse.
My first instinct was to run straight back to Montana, to the one place in the world where my name meant nothing except trouble. I wanted to book a ticket, rent a car, and drive the last two hundred miles with the windows down, the cold air burning the scent of hay and pine into my memory before everything changed.
But then I remembered what else waited for me in Montana.
