Page 1 of His Aries Heiress (BLP Signs of Love #21)

Aries rules the head, which means she always leads with it, even if it is impulsively.

The only people Cassydie had ever loved were dead.

It was a truth she had been forced to sit with over the past two weeks.

Grief consumed her, and she wasn’t really sure how to continue living now that they were gone.

She wasn’t sure she wanted to keep living now that they were dead.

Not only had she lost them, her grief caused her to lose her job too.

Now, here she sat, completely broke and grasping onto her last glimmer of hope.

The private investigator sitting across from her looked at her as if she were a meal he desperately wanted to eat.

She couldn’t understand why. Her thick black hair hadn’t been taken care of properly in days, her brown eyes were permanently puffy at this point, and her toffee colored skin wasn’t as vibrant as it once was.

Not to mention, she’d lost a few pounds over the past few weeks, so her thickness was quickly turning into slim-thick.

Her best friend would have tons to say about that, if she were alive.

Lead filled her stomach as she squirmed.

She held onto the cool glass of water on the table in front of her while the noise of the seedy dive bar filled her ears.

A basketball game played, and there was a rowdy crowd of men way past drunk and making too much noise.

The smell of fried foods and beer filled her nostrils, making her empty stomach queasy.

“Well?” she finally asked. The way Austin looked at her with his beady blue eyes made Cassydie uncomfortable, but she wasn’t about to sit there all day either. Not that she had anything else to do, but she’d rather be holed in her apartment than with the seedy private investigator.

Austin licked his lips and leaned forward, his thin mustache hiking as he smiled with all his yellow teeth.

Cassydie frowned. Her patience was thinning.

She chalked that up to her sign. Aries women had very little patience for foolery, and Austin exuded plenty of foolery.

It was unfortunate that he was the only private investigator she could afford.

The money from her final check went to him, and she silently prayed he was about to deliver.

If not, she would jump off the closest bridge, but not before pushing him first.

“I tell you how pretty you look tonight?” Austin twirled a toothpick around in his mouth before he smoothed a hand over his slicked back greasy black hair.

Cassydie’s nose wrinkled, and she clenched her jaw.

They stared at each other for a moment before she finally snapped.

“Listen, I don’t have time for your shit.

I paid you to do a job, and that’s all I need from you.

I don’t need your compliments or anything else you might be thinking up in that brain of yours.

“My parents are dead . My best friend is dead . And you are my last hope to finding a meaningful connection for me in this fucked up world. Did you find something or not?”

Another thing about Aries women, . . . they almost always cried when they felt strong emotions. Happiness, anger, sadness, . . . it all filtered into one reaction: tears.

Cassydie swiped at her tears, irritated that this slimeball saw her cry. She straightened her back and looked in him the eyes as she waited for him to speak.

It annoyed her that the grin on his face didn’t slip. He gazed at her as if he was toying with her, which caused her to squirm while she tried to stamp her anger down.

“I found a man named Gregory Malone. Goes by Grim. He’s your sperm donor.”

Cassydie sat there still as stone as she absorbed his words.

Her entire life, she thought Nora and Levi Lee were her parents.

It wasn’t until two weeks ago that the truth she had known her entire life shattered.

It was a date that always held significance.

April 19th. Her birthday. She always prided herself on being born on Easter.

The holiday had yet to land back on her birthday again, but it still felt special.

She was born on the day God had risen. That was special.

Later in life, when she learned about astrology and the zodiac signs, she prided herself on being an Aries, which was the leader of the zodiac signs.

Her birthday landed on the very last day of Aries season, and that felt special to her too.

According to her mother, she was born an entire month early, so being an Aries was truly meant for her.

Now, though, she would be okay with forgetting her special day altogether.

Birthdays had always been a big deal in her family.

They went hard for each other, and she was blessed enough to have a best friend who went just as hard.

Just a few weeks ago, birthdays were her favorite thing.

Now, she didn’t care to ever celebrate another one.

Maybe if her parents hadn’t always been so big on birthdays, they would still be alive.

They never would have been on the way to her apartment with her best friend, Cierra, to surprise her with cake and dinner.

They never would have been hit by a semitruck.

Her mother and Cierra never would have died on impact.

Her father never would have given her a sliver of hope for living for three days after that, long enough to reveal the truth that she was adopted, before dying.

She’d barely been able to get answers out of him because of his condition, so all she knew was that her real parents lived in a city called Ellwood, which was across the country from where she lived in Philadelphia.

When her father succumbed to his injuries, the only thing keeping her from taking her own life was the thought of having a second chance.

The possibility of there being another family out there for her to get to know tugged at her.

But now that this greasy private investigator found her biological father, she felt stuck.

After several long seconds, she tried to clear the lump in her throat as she timidly asked, “And my biological mother?”

For some reason, she was more interested in knowing her than her biological father. The idea of sinking into an embrace from a motherly figure almost brought her to tears, but she blinked them away.

Austin shook his head slightly. “She died a couple of months after you were born.”

Cassydie clenched her jaw and breathed deeply. The news hit her like a punch to the gut and shattered a lot of her hopes, but she cleared her throat and pushed forward, not ready to give up just yet. “Do you have an address for him?”

Austin looked down at the table. It was the first time he showed any kind of emotion aside from horniness.

It looked like embarrassment sank into his features for a split second before he shrugged indifferently, putting a mask back on.

“No. All I could find was a name and the hospital you were born at.”

Cassydie’s hope dwindled by the second. She allowed a couple of tears to fall.

She knew she would get exactly what she paid for, and she didn’t pay much at all.

Her job as a receptionist for a wax center paid her bills while her parents paid her tuition to get through grad school.

At thirty years old, she was finally almost finished.

The key word being was because she hadn’t attended class since the accident and knew she had failed out of her courses due to her absence.

She hadn’t even had to energy to email her professors and let them know what was going on.

Depression had been like a damn monkey on her back, and the only thing she made time for was crying and finding her biological parents. There was no room for anything else.

“Is there any more digging you can do?” Before the question even formed in her mind, she knew the answer, but she felt the need to ask it anyway.

Austin’s smile grew, and it made Cassydie’s skin crawl. “You gotta pay to play, sweetheart. I’m sure there’s more I could find out, but I ain’t doin’ it free. Not even for a pretty little thing like yourself.”

Cassydie nodded her head slowly and stood to her feet. She looked down at Austin and held her hand out for the single sheet of paper he held containing the information he found. He looked up at her with curiosity dancing in his eyes as he slid the paper toward her.

“Thank you,” she muttered, turning to walk away.

He reached out and grabbed her wrist. Cassydie was jerked back by the motion and stumbled into the table. Her weary eyes found his, and anger suddenly flowed through her. She tried to pull away from him, but he tightened his grip.

“What do you say we get on out of here, sweetheart? There’s a motel right up the street?—”

“Get your fuckin’ hands off me.” Cassydie’s temper was about to flare all the way up, and that was never good for anyone.

She did her best to keep her emotions in check because she knew how she could get when she was pissed off.

Couple that with the trauma she’d been through, and if Austin knew what was good for him, he would run.

Austin must have seen something in her eyes because he let go of her and held his hands up in mock surrender. “I didn’t mean nothin’ by it, pretty girl. Just trying to help ease your pain.”

She shook her head and straightened out her wrinkled blue T-shirt.

Nobody could ease her pain, but especially not him, so she didn’t justify that with a response.

She simply held her head high, even though she felt as though the dam would break at any moment, and walked out of the bar.

Her skin crawled because she could feel Austin’s eyes on her as she walked away.

There was something about him that really didn’t sit right with her.

Once the cool afternoon air hit her, she inhaled a staggered breath and rushed toward her beat up car.

It was maroon with rust in random spots and old as dirt, but it was the same car her parents bought her when she was sixteen.

She adored the car and appreciated that it always got her from point A to B.

One day, she planned to buy a new one, but as she got into the car, her already dark mood got even darker.

Without her master’s in public relations, she wasn’t confident that she could own her own public relations firm one day.

She already had her bachelor’s in strategic communications, but her master’s meant so much to her.

Cassydie was used to being the best at what she did, and she’d been working hard toward her degree for a long time now.

She felt like a failure, which caused a rainfall of thoughts to swarm her mind, one being that she would never be able to afford a new car.

“Guess it’s just me and you, Marlon,” she whispered to her car as she rubbed the dash and then started it up.

On the drive home, she opted for complete silence, outside of the sound of her sniffles and blowing her nose with napkins she found in the glove compartment.

Misery had found her and wrapped her in its embrace, but she always thought misery loved company.

God must have missed that memo when it came to her, because she was completely alone.

When she pulled up to her apartment, she parked and then wiped her tears before she grabbed the piece of paper from the middle console. The walk toward her first floor apartment was slow as she looked down at the paper. There were only a few sentences typed on it. The name of her mother and father:

Gregory ‘Grim’ Malone

Addison Malone

Cassydie wondered what Grim meant. Surely that couldn’t be his middle name. The next line was the city they resided, which she already knew:

Ellwood

And under that was the name of a hospital:

United Hospital located downtown Ellwood

She let out a heavy breath, and then her stomach dropped when she looked up as she approached her apartment door. Heat filled her body, which caused her toffee colored skin to turn red from embarrassment as she read the note attached to her door.

Eviction was written in bright red letters. She snatched the paper down and hurried to unlock her door. Once inside the cramped apartment, she let the two pieces of paper slip from her grasp as she slid to the floor along with them.

This time, she allowed her tears to flow freely as she sobbed into her hands. Her life was so fucked up, and she wasn’t sure how she would pick herself up from the depths of despair. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to.

After what felt like an hour, all her tears had dried, and her puffy eyes landed on the piece of paper just in front of her feet. The word Ellwood peered back at her, and she realized she had nothing else to lose and nothing more keeping her in Philadelphia.

Slowly, as her mind accepted what she was about to do, she pulled her phone out of her pocket and checked her bank account. She had just under three hundred dollars left to her name. She wondered if that would be enough to get her to Ellwood before she decided she would make it enough.

Impulsiveness had always been in her nature, so it felt normal for her to slowly rise to her feet and look around the apartment.

Most of the things there would be left behind, but there were some things she would pack to make living out of her car easier.

She would also pack up everything that reminded her of her parents and best friend.

Those things she would never part with, but everything else .

. . She sighed. It was officially time to say goodbye to her old life.

She didn’t even know if a new life existed for her, but she did know she had just enough energy and hope to at least try.