Page 2 of Perfect Assumption

“Let me go.” I struggle.

He seems startled that I’m fighting him. “Kid, trust me, this is for your own…”

Ding.

The elevator doors open, and I sprint out into the corridor of dark blue leading right to my front door. My closed front door. “What the hell is going on here?” I bellow.

Whether it’s the presence of alcohol in my system or my own fear, I turn to the nearest cop and demand, “Tell me what the hell’s going on?”

His face is stoic, but through my buzz, I see a flicker in his eyes.

It’s sympathy.

I start running and yelling. “Mom? Dad? Carrie?”

Suddenly the front door flies open as I get closer, and I spy my older sister surrounded by more police officers and my godfather. A denial is ripped from me without a single person saying a word. “No!”

Carrie jumps up from her chair and races toward me. She slams up against me to catch me as I fall. Her tiny body can’t hold my much taller size, and we both go down to the floor as I repeat over and over, “Mom? Dad?”

“Ward, I have something I have to tell you…” she starts.

“No! They were just going out to dinner.”

“There was an accident,” she tries again.

My head swivels around to my godfather—my father’s best friend and my sister’s boss. As a federal judge, his stress level is normally high, but he looks like he’s aged about twenty years. “Hayden?” My voice breaks on my plea.

He crosses the room and joins the circle. “I’m here for whatever you need, kids.”

“I need you to bring them back.” And that’s when I break down and cry. I feel Carrie’s tears against my shoulder. My hand comes up to clutch her to me.

“I wish I could for both your sakes. But I’ll be here to help you.”

* * *

Three weeks later,we’re prisoners in our own home. I sneer, a grown man’s reaction to a little boy’s terror. Ever since the assets behind our parents’ wills have been made public because paperwork had to be filed, we’ve been tormented by nothing but the popping of flashbulbs any time we try to step from our building. According to my godfather, “Any SOB can pay for a copy of your parents’ probate file since it has to be recorded with the state.”

It makes things that much worse. Carys’s and my faces have been splashed on the front of every trashy news site. There’s paparazzi camped out waiting to get pictures of two of the youngest multimillionaires in the United States.

“What the hell are we supposed to do with this?” I shouted at the lawyers’ office.

“Calm down, Ward,” Hayden tried to soothe me.

“Why? My parents were worth—I’m sorry. What was the amount again?” I ask the probate attorney, whose name I’ve forgotten seconds after I shook his hand.

“The last time they provided me with a quarterly report, the amount was $476,892,743.51.”

“Let’s not forget the fifty-one cents,” I drawl.

“Ward,” Carys tries again.

“Carrie, what the hell were they thinking not preparing us for this?” I shout.

“I don’t know!” she yells back.

That’s when I realize Carys has just as little of an idea of what to do as I do. I just assumed because she was older she had a better handle on things.

I should have known better. No one has any idea how to handle this.