They Sold Me, Then My Dead Mother Came to Take Me Home novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: The Offer

Jonas's POV

Ernest Eckhart asked for me by name.

His lawyer called the ranch at nine that night and said his client would make a statement to nobody but Jonas Makinen.

Mara was asleep in my bed with her legs drawn up under her, and I stood in the doorway a long time before I decided.

I left a note on the pillow and drove to the county jail.

They put us in a room with a steel table and a camera in the corner.

Ernest had been in a cell for twelve hours, and it showed.

His collar was open and his chin was gray with stubble.

His good suit had a rip at the knee where the deputies had put him on the floor.

He still sat down heavily, as if the chair were his.

"Makinen," he said. "You look like your father."

"Say what you asked me here to say."

"I'll make you an offer."

"I'm listening."

He leaned in over the steel.

"Eckhart Timber holds the cutting rights on your north ridge. Ninety years of rights. Your father hated them, and your grandfather before him. I will sign them over to you tonight, free and clear."

I said nothing.

"Add the two million you paid me, with interest. Add another five on top."

"For what?"

"Mara turns twenty-eight on Saturday. On Saturday she signs a paper that makes me her trustee. She's sick, Jonas. She can't run a company. Tell her it's for her own good. She listens to you."

"She does not listen to me."

"She sleeps in your house."

I put both hands flat on the table.

"Say that again," I said.

He sat back and smiled, and I saw what my father had seen in him, a man who could put a price on anything in the room.

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