Page 137 of Heartless Heathens

Without an heir, Sonny was the beacon of hope Arlan needed. His bloodline would die but his legacy would continue. What did that mean now with Romina in the picture?

It didn’t take long to pack up all the things we cared about in that chapel. There wasn’t much of it. There was a strong desire to burn it all down but Santorini advised against it. Until we knew how the future was going to play out for us it was better to keep attention at a minimum.

Once we arrived, she stood at the entrance of the estate. Eyes big with the kind of magic you only saw in children. Maybe she was right to be looking at this place like that. For us, it held nothing but cold and cruel memories. With Arlan dead, this was our home now, it was her home too. We would make it into something different.

“The lawyer is here,” Sonny said, tucking his phone back in his pocket.

“Lawyer?” she asked.

“Death is a business transaction,” Felix said, looping her arm into his and walking her up the steps of the mansion.

I handed the key to the valet and grabbed one of Romina’s bags before I followed behind. It was no different inside than it had ever been before. No part of this gigantic monstrosity of a home actually felt Arlan’s absence. She walked through the gargantuan rooms with a deer-in-headlights sort of look, until finally we made our way to his office.

We were greeted by the floor to ceiling sized portrait of Arlan hanging behind his own desk. A tad too self-important if you asked me. But nobody asked me. In the painting he wore a black robe and held a skull in his right hand. The painting was from before Korina had even been born, but he was already an old man of fifty something in it. His young little trophy wife went missing soon after she birthed Korina but no one even batted an eye.

It seemed to be the curse of anyone who married into the bloodshed.Theywere the sacrifice needed for an offspring. They just didn’t know it.

“I just have a few papers I need you to sign.” She was a brunette in a pencil skirt, her hair was a messy rat's nest on top of her head, and she wore thin framed glasses on her nose.

She passed each one of us a stack of papers and began to shuffle them around while she pointed where the signatures were needed. I think her name was Amanda, but I really couldn’t remember. I usually got lost in my own thoughts anytime she came around to deal with Arlan’s shit.

“And you must be Romina.” She gave her a big smile but Romi looked to Felix anxiously, like Amanda couldn’t be trusted.

Maybe it was Ashley?

“It’s okay, Mina. Alyssa is here to help.” Close enough.

“These are for you.” She pulled a thick, green folder out from her leather briefcase and undid the rubber bands holding it together.

It was a lot of shit.

“Your grandfather put in a few stipulations to your portion of the inheritance as well as Sonny’s, but nothing unreasonable. Everything from his estates to his investments and equity will be yours but you will not have full access to it until you’ve finished formal schooling. You’ll receive an allowance until then.” She looked overwhelmed, flipping through the papers Artemis had given her.

Sonny was staring indifferently at his stack, with his arms crossed over his chest.

“What’s the old man making you do?” I asked him.

“Marry Romina.”

“What?” Came from Felix, the outrage clear in his voice.

“Huh?” she asked at the same time, completely confused.

I wasn’t surprised. It made sense the old man would want to unite the last living person in his bloodline to the person he’d groomed to succeed him.

But what did that mean for my brother and I?

Our inheritance had no stipulations. We were free to do what we wanted and live as we pleased. Yet somehow, it didn’t feel as untethered as I hoped it would. Now my future dangled under Arlan’s command like a marionette, my puppeteer was now nothing but ash and yet somehow still controlled the strings.

“He can’t do this, can he, Alyssa?” he asked the lawyer.

Felix looked positively pissed, not holding back his anger as he kicked an innocent wastebasket and spilled its contents out on the floor of the office. Romina’s eyes were glazed over like she was in another dimension, totally unaware of what was going on around her in a state of pure dissociation. She slowly backed away towards the door.

“Little lamb?” I asked her.

“I-I just need a few minutes,” she said with a blank expression.

“Take all the time you need.” Amber told her before shifting her eyes back to my twin. “Unfortunately, he can Mr. Escura. There’s a no contest clause on the inheritance and if the conditions are not met the assets will not be distributed.”