Every foster kid whose parents didn’t die worries that they were abandoned because their parents didn’t love them. I definitely felt that way, even though Mom said Dad didn’t know about me.
Now that I’m meeting my grandma—or my sperm donor’s mom, anyway—I realize that for me, that fear might actually be true.
After Catherine, or that’s what the guy called her, drags me over to the side of the room, she asks me a few more questions.
“Where have you been living?” She frowns. “And how old are you now?”
“Wait.” I have a few questions of my own. “Did you know my mom was pregnant?”
She drops her voice. “I could lie to you. I hope you’ll remember that.” She stares at me. “Yes, I did. And I paid her quite a lot of money to terminate her pregnancy and disappear from Alistair’s life.”
Super. She paid my mom to eliminate me.
Catherine tilts her head slightly, still staring at me like I’m an experiment in a petri dish. “She disappeared shortly after that, but I’m beginning to think she didn’t terminate the pregnancy as promised.”
“You think?” I ask.
I must have spoken too loudly, because Catherine ushers us into a side room—the same room where I just witnessed another rich parent sharing disappointing news with her child.
Interestingly, all the times I’ve wondered about my father, I never once considered he might be hugely wealthy, and it never occurred to me that the family that abandoned us might have wanted me dead. No matter how well prepared you think you are for something, it can always be worse than you think.
“I’d like to talk to your mother.” Mrs. Richmond sits carefully in a chair at the head of the smallish table in the corner of the room. “We have a lot of things to catch up on.”
“Sorry to disappoint you,” I say, “but she died, kind of a long time ago now.” I can’t help folding my arms, even though I know it looks a little aggressive. She can hardly blame me, right?
“She—” Mrs. Richmond blinks. “Your mother died?”
“I was eleven.”
I’m a little surprised when her face falls. “You were eleven.” Her brow furrows. “But then, who took care of you?”
“I went to a group home.”
When her lips twist, it’s satisfying. I want her to feel bad for what she did. But after a single moment, I feel a little guilty. I was in a group home for eighteen months, but then I met Seren and everything changed. “I did eventually find a good foster home placement,” I say.
“A foster home?” She may as well have said I went to a brothel. Or a landfill. That one actually hits a little close to home.
My foster father Dave’s family owns a landfill, and they’re some of the best people I’ve ever met. “Ever heard of Best Trash?” I arch one eyebrow. “The owner’s son, Dave, and his wife, Seren, took me in.”
Her lip is fully curled. “How lovely.”
“Well, while we’re judging, for the record, they’d never even consider forcing my girlfriend to abort her child, so. . .”
She stiffens. “I didn’t force anyone to—”
“I’m still working right now,” I say. “If you don’t need anything further?” I glance back at the doorway.
Mrs. Richmond licks her perfectly colored pink lips. “You’re a waiter?”
I think about explaining that I’m an accountant, and that I just lost my job, but I can’t do it. I don’t owe her an explanation, and I refuse to scramble around trying to make her proud of me. She clearly never wanted anything to do with me, so I’ll give her what she wants.
I head for the door.
“Wait.” The words sound torn from her.
I turn and look at her over my shoulder. “Yeah?”
“You look just like him.”
“I think that’s how genetics work,” I say. “But I’m not really sure.” I shrug. “You know, being a waiter and all.”
“What if—” Her breath hitches.
Now I’m getting annoyed. “What if what?”
“I don’t have—Alistair was my only child.”
Oh, how sad. She lost her only son, and now she’s all alone. “I’m very sorry for your loss.” My voice is so flat that it’s rude, and Seren definitely taught me better. But Alistair’s death isn’t my loss. She saw to it that I didn’t even meet the man.
“But would you—would you like to get to know me better?”
There it is. I was waiting to see if, now that she has no one else, she’d be interested in the child she rejected. “I appreciate the offer, but no.” My mom’s surely up in heaven, cheering. “You didn’t want me before your perfect son was gone. I’m pretty sure you won’t like me now that he is.”
I’m feeling pretty self-satisfied as I walk through the doorway when I hear her broken plea. “Please—wait.”
What now? I sigh as I turn around. “I really do need this job, even if you think it’s not a very good one.”
“I own this hotel.” She stands up. “You won’t lose your job.”
She owns the hotel? I’m trying to adjust to exactly how rich my sperm donor was as she stares at me. Maybe I should tell her I’m just working here as a temp—seems likely she’ll find that out herself.
“I’m willing to make you a deal,” she says. “I know you don’t know me, and clearly we didn’t get off to the best start, but I’d like a chance to get to know you, and I’m willing to pay for it.”
Rich people think everything’s for sale. That’s probably the thing I hate the most about them. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“I have no one to leave my fortune to,” she says. “It’s valued around three and a half billion dollars right now, and as things currently stand, my distant cousin and his son are going to inherit it all. If I don’t leave it to a charity of some kind.”
Three and a half billion.
I guess with that kind of money, everything probably is for sale to her. And if I were in line to inherit, there’s no way that Lisa’s dad could disapprove of her dating me. It would be like acquiring a Get Out of Jail Free card. I didn’t think those existed in real life, but. . .
“You said you had a deal to offer me?”
She smiles, finally on solid footing now that she’s convinced me to listen. I hate that I’m not just walking away, but I’ll swallow my pride if that’s what it takes to win Lisa back. “I’ll make you my new heir—you can inherit it all. But you have to meet a few requirements first.”
“I’m happy to get a DNA test,” I say. “If that’s what you’re worried about.”
She sits down at the table again and points at the chair next to her.
I pointedly take the one two chairs down, across from her.
“A DNA test? Sure, but what I’m more concerned about is something no test can tell me. The success of your future.”
The future? What’s she saying?
“If you want to inherit, you’ll have to demonstrate that you’re able to speak and act like a Richmond should. Only then will I change your name—”
I shake my head. “I’ll never change my name. I’m Emerson Duplessis.”
She frowns.
Three and a half billion. I know I’m being stupid. I should sign my name in blood on any contract she thrusts at me, but I have too much pride for that.
But after a moment, her frown gives way to a smile. “You really are a Richmond.”
I hate her.
“Here are my terms. You’ll learn to run the business—at my direction. The training will take as long as it takes. You’ll date a woman during that time of whom I approve. And then, when the time is right, you’ll marry her and promise to produce an heir within three years.”
“An heir?”
“In light of recent events, two would be better,” she says. “But I’ll only require one.” She arches one eyebrow. “It’s probably not reasonable to demand more of you than I accomplished myself.”
Is she kidding? “You think you’re the queen of bloody England.”
“Not quite, not yet anyway. They’re worth almost ten times what we are, but we’re a much younger dynasty. We have time.”
A younger. . .I can’t help spluttering. “You’re crazy.”
She laughs. “It’s good that you already see that. Alistair used to tell me that all the time.” She leans toward me, her eyes intent. “I speak and write in four languages fluently. I played piano at Juilliard. Yale awarded my MBA, and I chose them only because I’d already gotten my undergraduate at Harvard, and I couldn’t stomach the thought of attending a school as ridiculous as Stanford.” She shakes her head. “California’s still the worst. Every day I hope the news will report that it has finally slid off into the depths of the ocean where it belongs.”
She’s like a real, live caricature of a villain.
I stand up, ready to refuse her outright. Again.
But three and a half billion dollars. If I refuse her and leave, she might change her mind, or she might go to her grave as doggedly determined not to give me a dime as she was about ridding my father of my mother and me.
I think about Lisa again—she’s from a good family. Her dad owns a top accounting firm. Maybe she’d approve of her right off the bat.
“I have a girlfriend,” I say. “Her dad owns Jennings Accounting, which is one of the most robust accounting firms—”
Her nose scrunches. “Jennings?” She shakes her head. “Absolutely not.” She leans closer. “Emerson, I know you hate me right now. I know you think I’m disgusting. You might even think I’m everything that’s wrong with corporate America and wealthy people or both. But what I’m offering you isn’t a trust fund or a big chunk of money. It’s not a fresh start. It’s much, much more than that. What I’m offering you is huge. It will come with a California-sized target on your back, too. The only way you’ll survive running Richmond Steel is by having someone who can help you navigate the world I live in—someone who already knows how things work. You need someone who was raised in it.” She stands up, pulls something from her purse, and holds it out to me.
It’s a business card.
I take it from her and read it. Catherine Richmond, Chairperson of Richmond Steel. “You’re not even the CEO?” I look up at her.
She snorts. “That’s a good example of something someone in our world would already know. CEOs are paid employees—for them, this would be a job. It’s not a job for me. I can’t be ousted. I own the majority share of Richmond Steel, and I will until the day I die. No one can fire me, and no one can even second-guess me. I’m a chairperson, not a chief executive officer. You can’t earn my title—you only inherit it.”
The more she says, the more this feels like a bad movie.
“Think about it, and call me.”
I’m walking out the door, without being stopped this time, when my boss stops me. “Those champagne flutes you broke were disastrous, but now you’ve missed half an hour of the event.” Her face is bright red. “If you think that this is how we—”
“He missed that time at my behest,” Mrs. Richmond says. “Do you know who I am?” She tilts her head.
My boss freezes. “Mrs. Richmond.” She drops her head into a bow, for all the world acting like she’s a serf and this is her master.
“You won’t dock his pay a dime, and you won’t discipline him for anything to do with his absence or. . .” Catherine frowns. “The incident with the glasses. Am I clear?”
My boss nods without raising her eyes.
Mrs. Richmond walks past us and out the door.
“How do you know her?” My boss’s eyes are wide, and she actually looks. . .afraid.
I can’t help my smile. “Actually, she’s my grandmother.”
Her eyes goggle and she bobs around like a fish caught on a hook.
“I’m kidding,” I say. “I barely know her, but she had some questions about a friend of mine. It came up while she was grabbing some champagne.”
My boss finally drags in a breath. “Thank goodness.”
But seeing how people might react to the truth is a revelation. In my entire life, no one has ever cared much what I thought, because I’ve always been a nobody.
But—plot twist—maybe I’m not.
To change how people react to me, I just have to give up all my free will and basically everything else I care about. Talk about irony. For a split second, I almost pity my spineless, dead father. I wonder what his life must have been like?
He did fall for my tempestuous, impetuous mother. Maybe there was a spark in him after all. When I get home, Bea’s talking on the phone. I thought she’d be at work, but it must be her day off.
“No, he just walked in the door.”
I raise my eyebrows.
“It’s Jake,” she says. “He’s almost done filming.”
One of our two foster brothers is making his third movie. I’m not sure you could call him a movie star, but the budgets keep going up, and so do his paychecks. He was obnoxious enough when he was just a model, getting paid for smiling or flexing his abs or whatever. But now? I won’t be able to handle him at all.
“Is he coming back soon?”
He and Bea have this strange sort of brother-sister love-hate thing. I’m not crystal clear on all the details, but it started a long time ago. Apparently he was trying to con her when they met, and after his dad went to prison, he came to live with us.
Jake’s really easy to love.
Unfortunately, he’s even easier to hate.
As a roommate who spends about an equal amount of time in New York shooting commercials and in LA on movie sets, he’s not too bad. He always pays his share of the rent, and he’s rarely here. But when he is here, and as a brother. . .it’s complicated. If one of us is causing Mom to get more grey hairs than anyone else, you’d think it was the teenager who’s still at home.
But it’s definitely Jake.
“He said he’ll be back next week,” Bea says. “I think we should celebrate when he gets back.”
“Sure, as long as he pays.” I only agree because Bea hates going to parties even more than I do, so I know it’ll probably just be the three of us. “Just tell me which night. I don’t even have a job to make time around.”
Pitiful.
“Hey, Jake, I’ll call you back,” Bea says. “Looks like Emerson’s finally moved on to moping.”
“I’m not moping.” I kick the leg of the table, because she’s being annoying. I don’t mope.
“You are.” She sets her phone on the table. “What happened?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I cross the room to the fridge and start putting ice in a glass.
“Mrs. Herbert called, and she said that you broke a bunch of crystal, but for some reason she was told to just expense it, no questions asked.”
“I didn’t break it,” I say. “Some idiot rich lady just crashed into me.”
“Yeah, but why did the upper ups write it off?”
I try to act nonchalant. “No idea.”
“You’re lying.”
I spin toward her so fast that I spill the water I just filled up. “Am not.”
“Every single time you lie, your right eye twitches, just a little bit.”
“No way,” I say. “Now you’re the one making things ups.”
“Ha.” She stands and drops her hands on her hips. “You just agreed you were making things up first. But also, that eye thing is true.”
“No way you’d ever notice—”
“Jake told me,” she says. “And he’s never wrong.”
Not about stuff like that, anyway. After spending twelve years conning people, he got pretty good at uncovering people’s tells. Actually, he says that’s what makes him a good actor. He’s great at telling people what they want to hear and spotting their lies.
“So, what happened?” She steps toward me, and then points. “Just spill, Emerson, or I’ll call Mom and tell her you got dumped.”
“You already told.”
“Only about the fired part.”
“You wouldn’t screw me again.”
“Try me.” She crosses her arms.
Sisters suck. “Fine. Something weird happened.” The idea of telling someone. . .but if I’m going to, it may as well be Beatrice. Thanks to her parents, or maybe more specifically, her grandpa, she’s surprisingly good with strange things. Way better than I am, anyway. “I met my dad, kind of.”
She drops her phone on the floor, and the screen cracks. So much for her being better with weird things.
“I found out because one of the events I was catering was his funeral, so I guess I didn’t really meet him, but I found out who he was, and I met my grandma, and I found out that she paid my mom to kill me. So.”
She still hasn’t even leaned over to pick up her phone.
“Oh, and she offered me a deal. Since my dad died, she’ll inherit me or whatever, but only if I agree to be a good little puppy. She said her company’s worth, like, a lot of money.” It doesn’t feel like now is the time to disclose exactly how much.
Bea blinks.
“It was a weird day, but as an upshot, she told that Mrs. Hughes lady not to bill me for the champagne flutes that broke, so.” I pull $300 out of my pocket. “Between the hourly rate and the tips, it wasn’t a bad day.”
“Mrs. Herbert,” Bea says. She finally picks up her phone. “What does a ‘good puppy’ mean, exactly?”
I drop onto a kitchen chair. “She said I have to marry someone she approves of and then I have to have a baby. Also, I have to let her teach me to run the family business.”
“Does she think it’s eighteen-oh-nine?” Bea’s look of disgust is pretty impressive.
“Well, she is talking about giving me like three billion dollars or something.”
Bea stares at me blankly for a moment, and then she says, “I’ll marry anyone she chooses, including an eighty-year-old man. Or, you know what? I’d marry a woman for half that. You should tell her. I’m a bargain.” Bea sits next to me and stares straight ahead. “That was a weird day.”
“You’re telling me.”
“Three billion dollars, Emerson? It’s hard to believe. I’m not sure I can even write that. How many zeroes is it?”
Catherine Richmond didn’t look like she was kidding. When I googled Richmond Steel, it looked legit. “What if it’s real?”
“I was mostly kidding, but there’s not much I wouldn’t do for that much money,” she says.
“I don’t know,” I say.
“If you did get it, you’d never have to do what anyone else said ever again.”
“Yeah, but she wants veto power on everything that matters until she croaks.” I hold up a finger. “Who I marry.” I hold up another. “Having a kid.” I hold up one more. “My job and work every day.” I laugh. “And she said two kids would be better.”
Bea doesn’t seem nearly as upset as me. “Do you remember the first time I made you eat kimchi?”
We sure are changing gears fast. “Um, yeah.”
“What did you say about it?”
I shrug. “I didn’t like it.”
“You told me it tasted like carbonated socks.”
I can’t help snorting a little. “It did, kind of.”
“But now?”
“I love it, especially with bulgogi or ramen.”
“That’s called an acquired taste,” she says. “And don’t take this the wrong way, Em, but you’re an acquired taste yourself.”
I’d like to argue with being compared to kimchi, but she might be right. “I do talk about numbers too much for most people.”
“And you argue with people sometimes just to annoy them.”
“Hardly ever,” I say.
She pulls a face. “My point is, let your grandmother get to know you a little. She might change her mind about dictating everything to you.”
“But—”
“She just lost her son,” Bea says. “And she doesn’t sound like the most easy-going person, or maybe even the nicest, but you might find that she’s an acquired taste too.”
“Are you suggesting that I become friends with the woman who paid my mom to prevent me from being born?”
“She didn’t know you,” Bea says. “And sometimes people can do things to someone they don’t know that they’d never be able to do when they know them. Think about internet trolls and the horrible things they say. Most of them would never dare in real life.”
“You’re saying that I should take the deal, get to know her, and try to convince her to let me have the money and live my life however I want?”
Bea shrugs. “I’m saying that for three billion dollars, it’s worth a little effort to try.”
I think about it for a moment and decide to give it a chance. I call my grandma, expecting to get an assistant or something, but to my shock, she picks up.
“Hello?”
“Um, this is Emerson.”
“Oh.”
No ‘nice to hear from you?’ No ‘I’m so happy you called?’ Okay. Fine. “I’ve been thinking about the offer you made.”
“And?”
“I’ll give it a try.”
“Oh, good. You can come over tonight or tomorrow. Which would you prefer?”
“Come over?”
“Obviously you’ll need to live with me,” she says. “In the Richmond mansion.”
I blink.
Bea nods and waves her hand in a little circle, encouraging me to actually say something.
“Oh. Uh, well, I guess I can pack tonight and come in the morning.”
“Please don’t,” she says.
“Don’t. . .come tomorrow?”
“Don’t pack anything. We’ll buy you a whole new wardrobe, as well as anything else you may need.”
“But—”
“Trust me on this,” she says. “It’s the beginning of a whole new life for you.”
“Other than a few small things, I really like my current life,” I say.
“That’s because you don’t know any better.”
I don’t argue with her. It would be a waste of breath. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Eight a.m. Don’t be late.” She rattles off an address and hangs up.
I scrabble to write it down before I mix anything up. “Well, that didn’t give me warm fuzzies.”
“I think we should have bulgogi and kimchi for dinner,” Bea says. “Looks like it’ll be your last relaxing meal for a while.”
“Or, you know, forever.” I shake my head.
“And you know, she is your grandma. Your real, live grandma that you didn’t know you had. You may wind up loving her, Emerson. This could be really, really good.”
“I’m just hoping neither of us kills the other—at least, not before she writes me into that will.”