“Claudio,” I croak out. “Why are you here?”
“I’ve been trying to call you for two days!” He screams it, jolting me awake. “You fucking bitch!” I look at him and realize he’s been crying.
“Claudio,” I repeat.
“No,” he says, shaking his head in that dramatic way he does. “No, Tiffy. You had me so worried. I came all the way from Nevada. Drove straight through. I asked Cole to come check on you, but he said he’d send someone from his office. And the thought that a stranger would find your body—”
“I’m fine, Claudio.”
“It doesn’t matter. I thought you…” He sniffs. “I thought you’d…”
“I didn’t.” The fact that he thinks I’d take the easy way out like my mother stings more than I care to admit. “I just don’t feel like talking to anyone.”
He comes over to the bed and lies down next to me. He pulls me into a hug that is deep, and sad, and says all the things I needed to hear in one silent gesture. “Please,” he says. “Don’t do this. Don’t give up. We’re going to be fine. OK?”
I nod into his embrace. “I know. I do. I just needed… time.”
We lie there like that. Me and my best friend. I don’t know how long, but it’s a considerable amount of time. It slips away from me these days.
“Get up now, OK?” he asks. “I’ll make you breakfast and coffee. And we can put things back together.”
“I’m not sure I want to put things back together, Claudio. Cole.”
“Oh, God,” he says. “Don’t even mention that bastard’s name.”
“Why?” I turn to him. “What’s happened?”
“You mean besides the fact that he’s got foreign investors all over the Landslide like he owns it? You need to fire him, Tiffy. Today. He needs to get his nosy ass out of your hotel. He’s out there making decisions. He fired all the dancers.”
“What?”
“He shut down the show, Tiffy. And the review on that travel site came out today. It was a five-star rating and he’s fucked it all up.”
“Why would he fire them? They were the only money-makers we had.”
“That’s the million-dollar question, right? Why would he fire them?” Claudio sucks in a deep breath through his teeth and glares at some image of Cole in his imagination.
But that bit of news gets me moving. Cole fired the dancers? It just doesn’t make sense.
I let Claudio make breakfast while I take a shower. I had no idea it had been two days since the funeral. Claudio is right. I need to pull myself together and find a way to get through this. So I pull on a robe, shuffle out to the kitchen and take a seat at my breakfast bar.
“Hungry?” Claudio asks over a griddle filled with pancakes. He flips them and then pours me a cup of coffee, adding in the cream and sugar he knows I love, and then slides it down the counter.
“Starved, actually.”
“Yes,” he says, pursing his lips and placing a spatula-holding hand on his hip. “Well, forgetting to eat for two days will do that to you.”
I sneer back at him, good-naturedly, of course, then I sigh. “It’s all so surreal, ya know?”
His sneer becomes a pout, and he walks over and hugs me. “I know, baby. But we’ll find a way to survive. We always do.”
“We’ve never really had to, Claudio. Have you ever thought of that?”
“But we’re equipped, Tiff.” He looks at me seriously. “We are. We’re smart, and innovative. I just know it.”
I have to laugh at that a little. “We might be. I guess we’ll find out.”
I get up with my coffee and wander over to the terrace to open the drapes. I spy the black attaché case from the day of the funeral on the coffee table and walk over to it. I pick it up. It’s not that heavy.
“What’s that?” Claudio asks from the stove.
“I’m not sure. Something from Fletcher. That blonde woman Fletcher set up with Cole—”
“What?” Claudio says. “When did that—”
“It doesn’t matter,” I interrupt. I can’t even go there yet. “She showed up at the funeral and handed me this case. Said Fletcher was sorry and he wanted me to have this.”
“Open it up, you crazy bitch.” Claudio starts piling food on plates as I turn the case around so the locking mechanism is facing me. I press the tabs and the lock disengages, allowing the top to pop up a little bit.
I lift the lid and peer inside. Claudio comes over with our food and places it on the table as he takes a seat next to me. “What is all that?”
I stare down at the papers. “Offices of Shalanger, Shalanger, and Shalanger. Fucking lawyers,” I say with contempt.
But then I start reading the top letter.
Dear Miss Preston,
I was hired by Fletcher Rourke to investigate the legality of the last will and testament of your father, Randall Jonathan Preston—
“Fletcher Rourke?” Claudio says, looking up at me.
That’s just the first of many questions we have as we read the letter together. And when we’re done, we sit there and stare at the paper in my hands.
“Cole?” Claudio asks. “Stole your inheritance?”
I’m having a hard time with it myself. He seems to be a no-good slimeball when it comes to women, but manipulating my father into cutting me out of the will with the idea that he will take over the company is a whole other matter.
I put the letter down and take out the corresponding documents, all labeled neatly in lawyer fashion, and start flipping through them.
Some of it is the legal definition of sound mind and body. Some of it is a case study and court ruling precedents. But the part that interests me most is the last piece of paper, signed by my father five days before he died, making Cole Lancaster the executor of his last will and testament.
As such, Cole will be paid two percent of sixteen billion dollars.
Thirty-two million dollars of my father’s sixteen-billion-dollar estate will go to Cole while I am left with nothing but a failing hotel.
“That was the day he left me up in Tahoe to go back to San Francisco,” I tell Claudio as I massage my temples, trying to stave off a headache.
“That two-timing swine,” Claudio says. He looks over at me with wide eyes. “We’re not gonna let him get away with this.”
“I don’t know, Claudio. It says here”—I hold up the legal document explaining what sound mind and body means—“that it’s pretty hard to prove someone was unable to make decisions when it comes to a will.”
“Your father had a stroke, Tiffy.”
“I know that. But he seemed fine to me. So he must’ve seemed fine to everyone else, too.”
“Don’t let Cole do this, Tiffy. Please.” Claudio takes my hand and squeezes. “Please. I’ll help you any way I can, but he does not get thirty-two million dollars by cheating. He just doesn’t. He must’ve known your father was getting sicker. I mean, come on! The man died five days later.”
”I realize that,” I say. “But that part about me not getting any money was there a long time ago. Look.” I point to one of the documents in the case. “There are several copies of the will. God only knows how this woman got these.” I pause for a moment as I picture her having lunch with Cole that day I blew up at Fletcher.
“Yeah, but—”
I cut Claudio off and keep going. “And all of them have the same stipulation. His shares in the corporation will be sold and all his money will be given to charity.”
“I knew about that,” Claudio says somberly. “Cole told me. But that’s not the point. Why should he get money out of this? And look, Tiffy,” Claudio says, taking out another legal document. “The paper trail of former executors. You’ve been on there since your mother died.” Claudio’s eyes narrow into slits. “Cole stole that money from you. Your father might’ve wanted his estate to go to charity, but he never wanted you to be penniless. He never wanted you to struggle.”