“Sterling, this whole town belongs to my family,” she reminds me in a brittle voice.
When I’d come back to Valmont, I’d found a different woman waiting for me in the place of the girl I left behind. I’d caught glimpses over the last few weeks here. The more we spent together, the more I saw her and that fiery personality I’d fallen for years ago. Now I understand what happened. Now I know why she stayed while they slowly chipped away at her. She’s come to life again slowly the more time we spent together, and now I see the mysterious piece of the story that explains everything. And I know what I need to do.
“It doesn’t belong to them anymore.” Truth burns in my words, because nothing will stop me. Not anymore. “This is our town now.”
“But—”
“There are things you need to know,” I stop her. It’s time I come clean, too. “Things that are going to scare you.”
She knits her fingers through mine more tightly. “No, it won’t.
For once, I hope she’s as stubborn as she sounds. I plunge into my other problems, realizing how insignificant they feel now. Judging from Adair’s pale face when I finish telling her about the Bratva, she doesn’t share that sentiment.
“I don’t just have problems,” I finish, “I have rivals. I have enemies.”
“No.” She shakes her head, but her hand doesn’t leave mine. “We have rivals. We have enemies.”
“Adair, I’m not sure you know what you’re getting in to,” I start.
“I’m starting then I look,” she says dryly, squeezing my hand. “And I’m all in.”
The law offices of Laird & Wharton are understated and serious, but also vaguely tense. The young, ambitious lawyers here would shove their mothers out of the way to get ahead, and you can feel it in the air, like a warning.
“Sterling Ford, here for a meeting with Ms. Laird and Mr. Welles,” I tell the receptionist, a thirty-something woman wearing an oversized, hand-knit poncho with garish makeup, as if Betty Page got up one day and dressed like Martha Stewart.
She smiles brightly but says nothing, instead pushing a button on her phone and speaking into her headset. “Ms. Laird,” the woman says, “I have a Sterling Ford here.”
She listens a moment, then rises to her feet. “This way, Mr. Ford. Ms. Laird and Mr. Welles will join you in our conference room.”
I go over the conversation I want to have in my head. Cameron Laird is the attorney who helped me anonymously purchase—and then sell on—my shares in MacLaine Media. She’s young, ambitious, and very talented. And somehow, despite being a lawyer, she seems like a good person. We’d spoken on the phone earlier about Ellie, as well as another matter.
I requested one other lawyer be here as well, one I’ve met before, but who probably won’t remember me. I’d warned Cameron as to why. In the past five years I’ve had a lot of time to consider lawyers, especially Mr. Welles. Since he’s still practicing, I assume he’s on good terms with the State Bar Association, a feat that can only be explained by assuming Welles kept his fingers crossed when he vowed to uphold the law and avoid conflicts of interest.
The timing of my scholarship getting pulled five years ago simply can’t be a coincidence. Someone was paid to take a stack of thin evidence—provided by Angus MacLaine—and make it amount to something that would get me banished from Valmont. Who better than a lawyer who was supposed to be representing the interests of the University, maybe one who worked for and had sway over the Dean of Students? And after what I learned today, the crime I want Welles to answer for has gotten a lot bigger in scope. His actions contributed to my daughter living a nightmare—a nightmare Welles will be living soon.
“God, you’re unbelievable, Welles. Every time I think you’ve hit rock bottom, you dig a little deeper,” a woman says, upset enough that her voice leaks into the hallway.
“You’re just fucking jealous I’m going to make partner when they announce it next month, even though you came to work for your older brother,” a man replies, his thin, nervous voice at odds with the message he’s trying to convey. “Look at this fucking meeting, you know? You helped this Ford guy, who’s stupid fucking rich, with whatever-it-was, and when he comes back needing more help he asks for me. Says something, don’t you think? I know your