“Yes,” I whisper.
“Come in first thing tomorrow,” he says.“We’ll sort through it.”
When I lower the phone, I’m still standing outside Lina’s door.Still breathing air that feels wrong for some fucking reason, like I stepped into a version of my life I’m not prepared to face.
Why the fuck am I anxious?
Before I can answer myself, the elevator doors slide open—and there they are again.
Mila with the pink umbrella tucked under her arm.And the woman—tall, red hair spilling in waves from a bun that’s losing its battle with gravity, freckles across her cheeks like a kinder artist painted her than the one who handled the rest of us.
She spots me first.Her head tilts, curiosity sparking in her eyes.“Are you lost?”Her voice is edged with amusement, like she’s not sure whether to worry or laugh.
“Maybe he came to give us a welcome gift,” the kid announces proudly.“It’s customary in some countries.”
The woman tries—and fails—to hide a groan.“Mila, that’s not?—”
“You’re one of Lina’s nieces?”The question slips out of me before I can filter it.
The little girl answers instead.“You knew my great-aunt?”
I point at my door—the one in front of Lina’s.“I live across.”
The woman looks at me again.Her expression shifts—curiosity, suspicion, something else I can’t pin down—but mostly ...unimpressed.Like she expected someone entirely different.
“You’re Alec?”she asks.
A pulse trips in my throat.“Yes,” I say.“How do you know about me?”
She exchanges a quick glance with her daughter, shrugs, and slides a key into the lock like this whole thing is nothing.“See you around, I guess.”
That’s it.See you around?
She knows my name.She knows who I am.
And I have no fucking idea why.
ChapterFive
Mara
My aunt Lina.My dear, baffling aunt Lina ...
I have no idea how to finish that sentence without tipping straight into a meltdown.I’ve been rewinding the same mental tape ever since Mr.Hanley—the lawyer—gave me the CliffsNotes version of what she’s been up to for the past eight years.
Thoughts like ‘What the fuck was she thinking?andShe cannot be serious,’keep flashing through my mind in a relentless loop.
Her husband died, and that’s when she wrote her first will.I get that.Grief rearranges you in ways you don’t see coming.But I believe that instead of letting anything heal, she unraveled by rewriting it every six months.Like clockwork.Fine-tuning her intentions depending on whatever had shifted in the Cavanagh family that season.I didn’t even know she cared enough to keep up with us, but apparently, she’s been watching.All of us.
Hiring a private investigator isn’t “keeping an eye,” it’s stalking.I’m not sure if she was aware, but someone should’ve told her that it would’ve been better if she had shown up.But at least now I know how she learned Sam had died—and how she tracked me down.
Then, after Sam was gone, she rewrote it all again.Redirected, rearranged, and rewrote to include my name in this game.Apparently, she decided I had “no one left.”As if the universe had placed a tiara on my head labeled Most Tragic.And then she added conditions.Instructions.Little quests, like she assumed I had nothing else to do while unraveling the pieces of my life.
“Oh, Aunt Lina.This was messed up in so many ways ...let me count them all.”I sigh as I grab a glass and fill it with water—because emotional meltdowns go better when you’re not dehydrated.
Listen, anyone would be happy with an inheritance, but me?Nope.
Every instinct in me wants to run.Pack, scoop Mila up, and flee this penthouse and the suffocating expectations built into its walls.But it’s those stipulations she added that prevent me from doing so.
