I smiled to myself then looked up to meet my father’s angry glance.
“Stop texting her,” he hissed at me. “She is the enemy.”
But she was making me lasagna.
“Let’s get down to business,” my father said, sitting at the conference table. “You all have been dragging this out. Chris needs an annulment yesterday. I will not have my son’s life ruined. He worked hard to build his empire. I won’t have it cut out from under him.”
“We have the paperwork ready to go,” Josh said. “But…”
He looked to his brother.
“What?” I insisted. “I never slept with Grace, so we should be granted an annulment, right?”
“You’re sure acting like you’re lovey-dovey with her.”
“I wasn’t,” I lied.
“Give me your phone,” he demanded.
I handed it to him without thinking. It was a habit I had developed when I was a teenager, desperate for his approval. But as he scrolled through my messages, the thought of my father reading what Grace and I were writing made me furious.
I snatched the phone back.
“You’re falling in love with her,” my father snarled. “I demand you get my son an annulment right now.”
Eric grimaced. The third man in the room stood up and handed me a folder.
“You don’t know me, but I represent your grandfather’s estate,” he began. “If you will open the folder.”
Inside was a sheet of paper with billions of dollars’ worth of assets listed.
“All of these are now yours.”
“I…” I was stunned.
“I thought Father put his money in a trust,” my dad blustered, jumping up, his chair toppling over to crash to the floor. “You told me the money was in a trust going to charity and there was no way to get it. I was only given ten million dollars when my father died. That money should be mine!”
“The money,” the lawyer said, clearly unfazed by my father’s outburst, “was put in trust, yes, and earmarked for charity, yes, but only if one of you did not find love in the five years after your father’s passing. He desperately wanted both you and Chris to be happy. His one regret was not being a better husband and father.”
“Why didn’t we know about this?” I asked, looking up at the lawyer.
“Because he wanted it to be organic. Horace was charged with letting me know when one of you had found a true love match and were married. Chris, you are in love with Grace. Believe me, I was skeptical, but Horace seems to believe it’s genuine and your father clearly does too. Therefore, you will inherit the money.”
“No!” my father yelled. “My son is getting an annulment.”
“Chris, if you get an annulment, then you won’t inherit. You have to be married at least six weeks for this to be valid,” the lawyer replied.
“That seems awfully short.”
The lawyer shrugged. “It’s actually very difficult to have these sorts of triggered inheritance clauses hold up in court. Six weeks is a reasonable burden.”
“But he’s not staying married to her. He can’t!” my father said desperately.
“He can get an annulment, at which point the funds return back into holding. There is only about three months left until the deadline, at which point all the money goes to charity. So if you want the money, Chris, you would have to find a different woman, fall in love, and marry within the next three months.”
“Or I would,” my father said, eyes glittering.
“You don’t believe in marriage,” I reminded him.
He shook himself. “That’s right. I don’t, and I won’t be blackmailed into getting married. Furthermore, I will not allow you to ruin your life for money that Grace is going to take half of anyways.”
Except that it was a lot of money. It would be a huge cash infusion that I wouldn’t have to beg around town for. It was ten billion dollars. I would be—well, I was already extremely wealthy, but now I would be a power player. The Svenssons would have to come begging to me for help with big projects.
“File the paperwork,” my father repeated, jabbing a finger at each Svensson brother.
They didn’t say a word.
“Come,” he barked to me, striding out of the door.
When he was out of earshot, Josh said to me, “How about we hold off on this and go for a divorce after you clear the six-week mark. Think you can stay married for another four weeks?”
“For ten billion? Fuck yeah!”
I just had to convince Grace to go along with it.
31
Grace
I felt lighter as I walked out of the publishing house to