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Fallon

S chool was awkward .

Evans demanded heavier security measures after I alerted him about Alexander attacking me at the fall festival and trying to push himself onto me. I could still taste his disgusting spit no matter how much I brushed my teeth or washed my mouth.

He also told me about how that family is a nightmare of brutalities and to steer clear of Alexander if I could help it. The whispers through the grapevine have been not so great. Someone’s family has been working to destroy anyone trying to blow the whistle on business plans with the investigation going on.

I only assumed it was Sloane’s or Alexander’s since they were the top contenders for wanting more power for themselves. Alexander wanted ties to my family–merging an international luxury real estate business with the most powerful attorneys in the country was a surefire way to stay on top. Sloane’s family wanted ties with the biggest, most powerful conglomerate ever known to man–the benefits were endless for anyone who hitched themselves to their train.

Brent’s family and mine were supposedly safe from the investigation with the amount of hush money being paid out to the government, cops, and lawyers crawling around threatening a federal indictment.

It was a great time— not .

Sloane kept trying to get me to come over to her house after the festival, and I couldn’t bring myself to even respond to her. She was a scary broad and her family hosted the meetings for everyone to participate in activities I couldn’t bring myself to attend. Sooner or later, I’d have to oblige for fear of what would happen if I didn’t play nice.

Since she couldn’t get me to respond, she decided to bomb Kelly’s phone asking when we were coming by for girl’s days. Yay .

I tried to stay in bed for two days, but responsibilities called, and I had one final briefing before the dreaded meeting with Augustus Vaughn. James came in to show me documents and make sure I was at least eating.

The documents went over my head and I couldn’t muster much of an appetite.

I needed to have my head on straight.

Leaving from my class for the day, I cringed at the thought of the walk across campus with my own personal security to keep me ‘safe’ from the dangers that may be lurking in every corner. The perks of being who I was, I guessed.

The guy that came with James didn’t talk much.

“Care for lunch, James?” I shot out into the silence of our walk.

He grumbled, “We should get to the office, Miss Montgomery.”

“Fast food?”

“We can pick something up, if you’d like.”

“What’s your favorite?” I tried making conversation. I didn’t have many people I could just chit chat with that I positively trusted, so my guards got the short end of the stick from me bugging them with small talk.

He seemed to ponder over it. He towered over me at six foot five and had an imposing broad figure. “Burgers.”

“So, we’re getting burgers for lunch!” I almost fist pumped at the excitement of having some nice, greasy food in my stomach.

James smiled at me. The other one never expressed much and always refused to come inside, even as the nights kept getting colder. Too professional, but at least I had eyes on the outside of my house around the clock.

Successfully conning them into lunch with me, we ate in near silence in the car. I blurted out a few things to which James responded, and the other one didn’t bat an eye at. He also didn’t agree to eat with us.

“Do you like your job?” I asked.

“Some days,” he replied quietly, finishing up his food and discarding it into the bag. “Time to go.”

He started up the engine and we were off for me to face my fate.

Dreading the rest of my life, I wondered how many situations I would find myself in. The CEO of my mother’s company was a large task she left, and I was horrified to know what would happen to me if I didn’t follow her footsteps closely.

I barely knew the footsteps she laid out for me to follow.

The creepy texts seemed to be on a pause. Kelly started looking into it and promised to keep me updated on what she found out. Everything was moving quickly, and the paranoia was starting to creep in again. I needed to know where the closest garbage can was in case I was going to throw up.

What if people found out I slept with Brent? What would that do to our companies?

What would Alexander do? He sent me a strange text this morning asking to take me on a date, but I hadn’t replied to him. He freaked me out too much. His family was full of powerful, brutal people that held sway over law enforcement. Not comforting.

I felt like I was in the eye of the storm for a brief reprieve, but the winds were going to start picking up again soon.

With the building in view, a pit formed in my stomach. I wanted to jump out of the car and die.

All right, let’s put on our big girl pants and do this shit. I already shed my virginity to the bad boy on campus. I can do whatever at this point.

The room was filled with those on a need-to-know basis only.

I sighed defeatedly and plopped in my seat. “Alright boys, let’s get this over with.”

The chatter stopped at the sound of my voice.

“Just like her mom,” one of them mused.

I could only dream of her footsteps being that easy to follow, but she did this at my age. I could figure out how to get it done with a little help. All of this was going to be my new normal no matter how much I kicked, screamed, or cried about it.

I took a deep breath, firming myself to speak. “Evans, I need you to brief me quickly on the decisions that my mom made. I need to make decisions like her. I don’t have her experience, but I need to make sure things run smoothly and that no one can catch me off guard. I’m going to tell you all, I am completely scared shitless, and I need your help. I am all in because I have been drowning with the sharks at play.”

Mr. Caldwell smiled. “Don’t worry, Miss Montgomery. You’re more like her than you know. We all have the company to worry about, and we will be with you every step of the way.”

The meeting started with a brief overview of some operations that were being orchestrated between the Montgomery business and the Vaughn empire. They needed new spots to hold goods, and we were on our way to acquiring new and secluded spots.

Who knew I’d go from not knowing what sex was like to learning how to organize black market transactions within a couple of weeks.

Evans turned his attention to me. “When dealing with Vaughn, be sure not to let him see you bleeding. He is a brutal man and will not take things easy on you for your ignorance to the business. He wants to resume as if you were Maria herself. I’m sure he plans on handing the operation to that fiend of a grandson as soon as he gets a handle on him and his... defiant ways.”

Well, that piqued my interest. “You mean the one I go to school with?”

“Yes. He’s a troublesome one, but not to worry about like Alexander. No rape cases pushed under the rug for him. Girls seem to flock to that one.” He tapped his tablet, strumming his fingers across the black screen. “You have met him, yes?”

Yep. Sure did. Especially when he was...

Focus!

“If you mean watching him pummel any other guy in his sights, sure. Anything to note?” I tried to act casual, but my intrusive thoughts might have been getting the best of me.

Tapping his chin and opening his tablet to scroll through some information, he replied. “Where the Fitzgerald child has had to cover sexual harassment, the Vaughn grandson has had triple that in assault cases. Volatile, unpredictable, and erratic that one is. If he were normal, he’d be on death row by now. He joins his grandfather’s cleaners in the family business until he is deemed to work well enough for leadership.”

I opened my mouth to speak but closed it out of uncertainty. Trying to formulate my thoughts, I asked, “How do you know this much about their company?”

“When you have this close of contact between families and companies, it’s hard not to know what’s going on in each of them. Whatever happens here, I’m sure Vaughn has his ways of knowing.”

Did that mean he knew what we were up against? He had to.

“Wait. What are cleaners and what does ‘until he is deemed to work well enough for leadership’ mean?”

His lips pressed into a thin line as he contemplated his next words before offering a smile meant to disarm me. “In the nicest way I can say this, they clean up stragglers or those who are a liability.”

“So, murder,” I blurted, my thoughts running out of my mouth before I could catch them.

“Well... sometimes, yes.”

I scanned the room of men; my eyes must have looked wild. Why not murder? They were already into the black market and illegal tradings.

But Brent murdering people?

Was there no hope of normalcy?

With the new information in mind, I swallowed the pill of reality. It was a large dose that sent shockwaves through my entire being. Accepting this new reality was going to be a tough hill to climb.

“Does he join them voluntarily? Wait, don’t answer that.” I held my hand up, trying not to physically clutch my pearls. “Let’s get back to dealing with Augustus. What will this meeting be like, and how do I act?”

Another man piped in. “Your mother was an expert when dealing with him. He practically groomed her and expected nothing but the best out of her every performance. A mentor to your mother, they held a very particular bond of close associates.”

He mentored my mother and taught her everything she knew, but I was left to flounder until she died. Was I supposed to catch on or what?

“So why didn’t he reach out sooner when she died?” My bluntness would be the death of me.

“Well, he did. While you were sequestered with that atrocious woman who gave everyone lip when we all reached out.” Mr. Caldwell butted in.

I wracked my brain to try to remember anything from Sylvia’s hell hole that would trigger a memory of any of this. As far as I knew, I was kept in the dark about most things and she never paid me any mind outside of her own proclivities. I was told to sit down, shut up, go to school, and mind my business.

Anything else would get me corporal punishment.

No letters came that I knew of. I never did much outside of school besides talk to Kelly. I lived in my bedroom–doing homework or reading to avoid her–for most of those years before I was ousted and was able to access some of my money to buy a house.

I even rummaged through memories of her abuse to try to search for clues. No dice.

“I never got anything,” I finally admitted into the silence. “What did she say to everyone?”

“Mostly excuses,” Evans said. “That you were grieving, didn’t want to take messages, or that you were out with friends, and that being underaged made her your legal caretaker. She threatened multiple lawyers on us, claiming you made that call and wanted to be left alone.”

I balled my fists on the table, trying not to slam them in frustration. First, she abuses me. Second, she isolates me. “She neglected... to relay that information to me.”

“Well, we have signed documents from you verifying certain details.”

That time I did slam my fists into the table. “Show me the fucking papers, Evans.”

All eyes fixed on me, some wide in surprise. A timid, soft-spoken girl like me finally snapping. Whatever Sylvia pulled was going to put her at the top of my hit list.

He did as I asked and pulled up a folder, sharing the screen to the projector in the room. There were multitudes of documents spanning the years I was with her with multiple statements and agreements.

The first was a no contact request due to grieving the loss of my mother, Maria. It clearly stated I was unable to coherently think or communicate while I dealt with the tragedy of her passing after years of watching her slowly die. I never wrote that, but my signature was expertly forged with the guardian signature beneath mine.

“Evans...I didn’t write these.”

He didn’t show signs of any emotion or thought. His game face was on. “These were produced by a lawyer from within the company. He claimed to have met with you over each and every letter, statement, or agreement that was relayed to us. Multiple have corroborated that story.”

From the texts to the vague comments made by everyone, this felt like it made sense.

Feeling a bit chaotic, I pulled out my phone.

Here goes nothing.

Me: we have rats in the ranks and they’ve been crawling around for years. Need help.

I shot off the text wondering what my life would turn into after it went out.

Feeling an inch of relief from the text, I looked out at everyone spread out around me, waiting for either instruction or what I would say next. “Then we have rats that need to be trapped. These,” I motioned to the screen and stood, “are not mine. I’ve never seen them. The options are that I was either coerced under the influence to sign these or they’ve been forged. Neither are great options, but whatever you all agreed to within some of these is null and void and I want Sylvia to answer for her actions.”

The men looked around, wondering what scheme we’d been pulled into. For all we knew, Sylvia could have signed the company away from underneath me. The money hungry bitch who loathed my mother for building herself up from the dirt had tricks at play.

I stood near the projection, tapping my foot as I looked through the letters and contracts sent using my name. Some approved monetary requests for her. Others were contracts signed for benefits that lasted past her guardianship when I turned eighteen. She’d planned and plotted against me while I was under her care.

But why?

Did she really hate my mother that much? Mom never told me a lot about her family, so much so that I never knew them personally or interacted outside of an occasional needed association. Whatever my remaining family had planned, it was all in the name of undermining my mother’s legacy.

“Give me a list of every person who approved, viewed, or even touched these documents. They undermined my mother and they’re done. If any of you in this room are on this list, I will personally kill you myself for putting this company at risk.”

With my arms crossed at the head of the table, I searched the expressions of the men before me, wondering if any of them knew anything about this. There would be a reckoning.

Evans cleared his throat, clearly surprised by my death threat. “I’ll have that list to you by end of day and you’ll have beefed up security for a few days.”

I nodded, holding onto my last scrap of composure.