“Yes, he’s going to take over the running of––”
“Is he?”
“Of course,” she snapped at me. “And with Nick paying off the debts, and the ownership of the horse farm being transferred from our father to Alan, then the main assets are untouched, which works out best for everyone.”
“What does Nick get out of it?”
“What do you mean, what does Nick get out of it? Are you kidding?”
“No, please, enlighten me.”
“Why, he gets to put this whole wretched chapter behind him. If he doesn’t help our father, then his name will be dragged through the mud the same way—”
“Nick’s the injured party,” I apprised her. “He can’t get dragged through the mud. In the court of public opinion, he’s the hero.”
“I don’t think that’s—”
“You can check,” I told her. “Look him up on social media, in the news, and you’ll see.”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. If Nick doesn’t help, our father will be ruined, utterly bankrupt. He’ll have to move in with one of us, and we’ll all be impacted.”
They wouldn’t be impacted for years from now, but again, she clearly had no idea about what charges her father was actually facing. “All of you?”
“Well, yes. Even our children.”
But I’d read everything Nick’s lawyer, the terribly capable and utterly frightening Mavis Barrington, had sent over to him, so I knew that Sterling Madison’s grandchildren would, in fact, be all right in the long term. In the short term it might suck, because they would be tied to their grandfather’s crimes, but kids were resilient. Their parents, not so much.
“My understanding is that your father set up trust funds for your kids that they can access when they turn twenty-one.”
“How do you—is Nick aware of that?” Beth asked me, her voice thready and small.
“He is,” I told her. “He, unlike you all, has an excellent lawyer.”
All four people were staring at me.
“Nick told me that when he came to you for help, you and Danielle,” I said to Beth, turning to her sister and then back, “didn’t believe him.”
“Well, of course not,” Danielle hissed, turning my focus from Beth to her. “Who would ever believe a story like that?”
“But when you saw the footage yourself,” I said, squinting at them, “and knew it was true, why not reach out to him then?”
“He’s gay,” Alan barked out. “Are you forgetting that? Do you have any idea what that news did to our family? We all found out at once, when that horrible footage came out, and they just announced it to the world like it was nothing.”
I nodded, feeling no need to correct them and explain that Nick was bisexual.
“Everyone knew about it and was talking about it. All our family and friends—it was everywhere. Imagine how we all felt, how betrayed, how ashamed we were, and of all of us, poor Sterling, you can’t even imagine how—he’s not the kind of man who—he could never—it’s just not possible for him to––”
“He panicked.” Danielle took over for her brother-in-law. “That day in the barn, he found out his only son was gay, and he wasn’t in his right mind. He flew into a rage, and what happened just…happened.”
But I’d seen the tape, well, some of it, but enough to know that there had been no fit of uncontrollable anger. He had told the men to make his son bleed, and he’d been calm and precise when he gave the order, hence the premeditated hate crime he was being charged with.
“Your brother told me that your father beat him daily after your mother died, and when he told you, you didn’t believe him about that, either.”
“You don’t understand,” Beth replied, almost pleading with me. “Nick lied all the time, about everything, and Daddy never laid a hand on Dani or me, so—”
“You didn’t believe him,” I concluded, getting up, needing to pace, feeling the heat flush my skin as the anger rose. I’d be choking on it in a second.
“Listen,” Danielle began. “I think we’re just going to walk down to where Nick—”
“You need to get in touch with your lawyer, because my guess is that he, or she, or they have no clue that you people think Alan here can run the horse farm. I’m telling you right now, he can’t. There’s a provision in the injunction Nick’s attorney has filed that clearly states that nobody who has fuck-all to do with your piece-of-shit father can ever run the goddamn horse ranch!”
I was furious, and I yelled the last, the sound bouncing off the walls.
“Get the fuck out and don’t come back!”
“Who do you––”
I snarled and stormed out of the room, out the front door, and around the side of the house, pacing near where the food tables were being set up, breathing in through my nose, hoping to God that Alan came out of the house and attacked me so I could beat the shit out of him. I hoped whoever ended up with the horse farm leveled it all and started over from scratch. Or, just as good, they could simply bar everyone on Nick’s father’s side of the family from ever stepping foot on the property again.