True Heiress Never Lies! novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: Ask Me Again

"No," I said. "Nobody ever told me."

My grandmother opened the folder on my father's knee and turned to page nine.

She put her finger on a paragraph and held it there.

He read it.

I watched his eyes go down the page and back up.

"If my daughter Sonia is found guilty of theft or fraud before her eighteenth birthday," he read aloud.

He read the rest more slowly.

"Her shares shall be voted by her father until she reaches twenty-five."

"Until twenty-five," my grandmother said. "Seven years.

"Seven years of you voting forty-seven percent of the company, and of whoever sits by you at the kitchen table telling you how."

His face was gray.

"Estelle knew this," he said.

"I'd imagine she read it first."

"She was the one who asked to have the lawyer review the will, after the funeral. She said I was too sad to do it."

My father stood.

He walked to the window, put his hand on the glass and stood there.

"I need to go home," he said finally. "Sonia. Will you come home with me? Just for tonight. Margaret can come too."

I looked at my grandmother.

She nodded.

"Where's Estelle?" I asked.

"She'll go to her sister's tonight. Tell her I said so."

"Dad."

"I'll tell her myself."

He did, in the parking lot, in a low voice.

I watched through the glass door as Estelle got into her silver car.

She drove away without looking at us.

At three in the morning, the house on Lakeshore was dark and quiet.

My grandmother put Peter's quilt over his shoulders on the couch, where he'd refused to sleep upstairs without us.

My father led me down the hall to his study.

I hadn't been inside it since the night of the theft.

It was the same.

Keep reading free with an account. Start True Heiress Never Lies! from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.