The Tycoon

“Why didn’t you say something?”

“It’s not a big deal,” she said. “People quit their jobs all the time.”

“I feel like it is, Sabrina. It feels like a really big deal. What can I do?”

She grinned up at me with her bright smile. The one I saw on TV all the time. The one I saw through to the grief underneath.

“I’ll be fine. I always am.”

I put my banana down and pulled her into my arms.

Later that night I felt the ping of an email notification in my hands and it startled me awake.

The email had bounced. Dylan’s email address no longer worked.

He’d shut down his account.

The King sisters were totally on their own.

8

VERONICA

The morning after the funeral I left the ranch super early. Sabrina’s car was already gone and I wondered if she’d taken off for Los Angeles so soon.

Bea’s bedroom door was still shut, so I sent her a text.

Fixing things. Be back soon.

I drove into the heart of rush-hour Dallas traffic, which was to say, I drove into the gates of hell, right to the King Industries building. A big concrete-and-steel phallus pushing up into the Texas sky.

First visit was to Madison White. Her firm was actually based out of Los Angeles, but she kept an office in the King Industries building. And she was so damn cool she didn’t even blink when I arrived at her office first thing in the morning without an appointment.

“I didn’t think you’d be here at this hour,” I said.

“Clayton and I had an early meeting.”

Right. Clayton.

We made small talk about traffic and weather while her assistant brought me tea.

“You’re here to see if there’s any way around the will,” she finally said.

“It’s that obvious?” I tried to make a joke, but there wasn’t much that was funny about my life today.

“I got the sense yesterday wasn’t what you expected to hear,” she said with a sympathetic bend of her head.

“No. Not really.”

“Your brother—”

“Won’t be coming. And if he does I can’t guarantee he won’t burn the whole thing down. My sisters and I with it.”

“He’s not that kind of man,” she said and then quickly asked, “Is he?”

“I don’t have the slightest idea what kind of man he is. But the men in my life haven’t exactly been trustworthy.”

She coughed and glanced away, and I got the impression that she understood exactly what I was talking about.

“But the will itself. There’s nothing I could do?”

“You could try to contest it,” she said, sitting back in her chair. She was wearing a red silk blouse and black pencil skirt and she looked sharp enough to cut something. “But you won’t get anywhere. Hank King was of very sound mind and body when he changed it. Your best hope is your brother arriving and being a decent human.”

Then it was hopeless.

It suddenly made so much sense why my father changed it. How specifically he wanted us punished.

“Did you get along with your dad?” I asked Madison.

She blinked clearly surprised by the question. “What relevance does my family have?”

“None,” I said and sip the tea her assistant brought me. “But I’m realizing my father changed his will because I left. And I didn’t come back. And Bea left the ranch to move in with me. And she never came back. And Sabrina left and made a name of her own.” I shook my head. “He must have known he was sick and we were never going to come back. He was punishing us for leaving him.”

But Dylan had left too—and he still got everything if he wanted it. Because he’s the son.

Fighting this will was futile. I could feel it in my bones. When he was alive he hid his love away, and he took his anger to the grave and left us with absolutely nothing.

Fitting. Poetic, even. Bravo, Dad. You asshole.

“Thank you, Madison,” I said as I stood up. She got up from behind her desk and walked me to her door.

“I am the legal counsel for King Industries, so there are things I can’t discuss with you.”

“I understand and I would never ask you—”

“You’re a good person, Veronica King. Probably too good for the father you had. But Clayton Rorick isn’t the devil he seems.”

“I know exactly who Clayton Rorick is.”

She opened the door and as I was walking out she put a hand against my arm.

“My father didn’t hate me,” she said. “But he would have liked this. He would have liked the idea of knocking me down a peg.”

I gave her a wan smile. “I’m sorry.”

“Me, too.”

From Madison’s office I ducked into the women’s room before heading up to Clayton’s office on the top floor of the building.

I put on a fresh coat of bright-red lipstick that matched my shoes and the thin leather belt around the waist of my gray business suit. It was my power suit. My-I-can-do-anything suit.