TROUBLE, A New Adult Romance Novel (The Rebel Series) by Elle Casey
Thirty minutes later, we’re in the lawyer’s conference room. The entire Rebel Wheels family is sitting there, and two lawyers are facing us, standing at the front of the room since there are no chairs remaining. We get there just in time to sit down and nod at everyone before the lawyers begin.
The older lawyer speaks first. “Thank you for coming on such short notice. Looks like you have your entire support network here.”
“That’s how I roll these days,” Teagan says.
“Musketeers. All for one, one for all,” Quin adds, holding Teagan’s hand over the corner of the table. Mick is between them.
“Why don’t we get started?” the lawyer says. “Basically, we have an offer on the table. We think it’s pretty attractive, and counsel you to take it with some caveats, but of course, it’s your decision.”
“Okay.” Teagan nods. “What is it? Lay it on me.”
“First some background,” the second lawyer says. He opens up a file folder and scans its contents. “The private investigator we hired, working on the information that you gathered for him, discovered some significant evidence. This went way beyond what we originally considered when we took the case. We’re now looking at criminal charges. We have not yet, however, turned over our discovery to the district attorney’s office.”
I look at Teagan. She’s really stressed, I can tell by the way her forehead is all wrinkled up. I wish there was something I could do or say to make her feel better. When she looks over at me, I get my chance; I blow her a quick kiss and she smiles. I’m proud of myself when I see some of her wrinkles smooth over.
“The conversation that … Mick … had with your father’s assistant was very revealing. Apparently your father worked out at a gym with his wife’s brother on a frequent basis. He had a locker there that still had his lock on it. Our investigator, following chain-of-evidence rules, gained access to the locker and its contents. Inside was your father’s gym bag with some clothing and a half-empty bottle of sports drink.”
I’m looking around at the faces at the table, surmising that they’re all thinking the same thing I am: What’s the big deal about a gym bag?
“We had the interior of that bottle tested at a lab and came up with some disturbing information.”
“Disturbing how?” Teagan asks.
“There were traces of ethylene glycol inside it.”
“What’s that?” Quin asks.
“Antifreeze,” Mick says.
When everyone turns to look at him, he shrugs. “What? We come across it in the garage all the time. We have to dispose of it a special way and report that stuff to the EPA. It’s a pain in the ass.”
“What does that mean?” Teagan asks. “Why was it in his drink?”
“It’s unfortunately used as a poison, almost impossible to detect and sweet enough to be easily masked in a sports drink. Also the same bright yellow that several brands use to dye the liquid.”
My ears are burning as I consider the ramifications. Poor Teagan.
“So you’re saying someone poisoned her dad?” Quin says. “Holy shit.”
“Would you like to hear the rest?” the older lawyer asks. “Or would you prefer to take a break first?”
Teagan shakes her head, holding Rebel’s hand. “No. I want to hear it all now.”
He continues. “We took this information along with some other facts that we learned of to the coroner who did the intake of your father’s remains when he died. There, we found that they had actually taken some samples from his organs and kept them before the cremation was carried out. There’s a period of time within which they keep and then destroy samples. Luckily, we showed up before that destruction period came due. They’ve agreed to hold onto the tissue indefinitely, so long as we pay for the storage, which we of course agreed to do. This means they can test for the poison being present in his system at the time of death, even though your father’s remains have been otherwise destroyed.”
“Thank you for doing that,” Teagan says, a lot of her normal energy missing from her voice.
“Of course. Following this development, we approached your father’s wife with the evidence we’ve gathered, along with some timeline information and some data we recovered from a hard drive that your father’s former assistant provided us. Needless to say, we made a very convincing argument to her that she cooperate and do the right thing.”
Teagan snorts. “Yeah, right. Like she’s ever done the right thing in her entire life.”
“We believe she realizes now the difficult situation she’s put herself in. Her only hope is to do whatever she can with damage control in the hope that when the DA comes knocking, she’ll be in the best position she can be in to defend herself.”
“If she poisoned my father, she has zero hope. She’s not that stupid.”
“We believe it wasn’t her, that is was her brother, actually, who carried out the poisoning.”
My jaw drops open. This just keeps getting weirder. Poor, poor, poor Teagan!
“How well do you know your stepmother?” the younger lawyer asks.
“Call her that to my face one more time and see what happens,” Teagan says, glaring at him.
He puts his hand to his chest. “My apologies, Miss Cross. I meant to say how well do you know your father’s wife?”
“Well enough to know I don’t want anything to do with her.”
“What I mean is, are you aware of her relationship with her brother?”
“No.”
I squirm in my seat. I don’t like the way he just said that last statement.
“Have you ever met him?”
“Maybe. Once or twice. I don’t remember.”
“We’ve interviewed several people who are privy to his private life. Suffice to say, he has a very … strong personality. He’s the one pulling the strings, we’re quite sure.”
Teagan collapses back into her chair, slouching down. “I don’t believe it. She’s evil.”
“Oh, make no mistake … we’re not giving her a free pass. She had her hand in this for certain. But she’s not the mastermind, if you will. She’s a puppet, albeit a willing puppet.”
“So what’s that mean?” I ask, not realizing I was going to speak until the words are out. “Sorry,” I say, looking around at everyone.
Teagan nods at me, as does Quin. Quin also gives me a thumbs up, making me feel not quite so embarrassed.
“It means that she’s at least smart enough to see when the game is over and she’s lost. And she’s willing to sell her brother out to save her own … self.” The young lawyer is smiling, and I get the distinct impression he’d be hell in the courtroom. I like him a lot more after I see this side of him.
“What’s the offer?” Rebel asks.
The entire room goes quiet as we absorb the fact that The Quiet One has spoken.
The older lawyer puts on his reading glasses and looks inside another file. “The offer is as follows …” He glances up at Teagan before continuing. “Teagan retains all the shares in the company allotted to her husband’s wife, giving her control of the corporation. The former Mrs. Cross - not Teagan but her father’s wife - agrees to testify truthfully to her brother’s plans and turn over evidence to the district attorney as required by law. She has already given it to her attorneys as a show of good faith and I have verified they have possession of it.”
“And what does she get?” Quin asks. “Besides a punch in the teeth and a bright orange jumpsuit.”
“She wants to keep the life insurance money.” The lawyer looks up.
“So let me get this straight,” Teagan says, sitting forward. “She helps kill my father, tries to steal his company from me, and yet she still wants to keep five million dollars for her trouble?”
The lawyer clears his voice. “Yes. She does.”
“Well, she can suck it. That’s my answer. Tell her that.” Teagan stands.
The older lawyer holds out a calming hand. “Please, wait. Just … have a seat and le
I stand up too, along with Quin, Mick, and Colin.
“I’ve heard enough,” Colin says. His face is twitching and I can tell he wants to punch something. I reach out and take his hand. Caught off guard, he looks at me and his expression softens.
“There’s nothing you can say that will change my mind,” Teagan says.
“May I try?” the lawyer says.
Maybe it’s the challenge there or something else, but Teagan hesitates.
“Hear him out,” Rebel says from his seated position. “Can’t hurt to listen.”
Teagan folds her arms across her chest. “Okay, so I’m listening.”
“She’s going to go to prison. Nothing we say to her is going to change that. A person who is responsible for the death of another person cannot collect on his life insurance policy. The benefits will go to the secondary beneficiary.”
“Which is …?” Teagan asks.
“You. It’s you.”
“So … what’s the big deal then? Why is she asking for something she can’t have?”
The lawyer shrugs. “Our best guess is that she thinks she’s going to somehow convince the jury that she’s not responsible. That she was an innocent pawn. However, we don’t believe that’s the case. If you want our recommendation ….?”
“I’m willing to hear it,” Teagan says.
“We recommend that you come back with an offer to let her keep one million, but we word the settlement in such a way that if the court were to decide she’s not entitled to it, that this one million would revert to you.”
“But she’ll spend it,” says Quin, slowly taking her seat again. Mick follows suit.
“Perhaps. But it’s unlikely that she’ll liquidate her entire estate. In the end, you’ll get your money either in cash or in liquidated assets. Or, perhaps you won’t…” He shrugs. “Regardless, you be paying twenty percent of your cash holdings to gain four million dollars cash and a company worth vastly more than that.”
“It’s a measured risk,” I say, bringing up vocabulary from one of my business classes. Everyone is back to sitting down around the table now.
“What if Teagan says no to everything?” Mick asks. “What happens then?”
“Worst case scenario?” the younger lawyer says. “This woman and her brother run the company into the ground. They steal from it, squeeze every penny they can from it, destroy it from the inside. It’s about to go through an IPO. The shares could be worth many millions of dollars now, but after it’s all over, they could dump them all on the exchange and then the whole thing would collapse when it was discovered what they’d done to the infrastructure. Teagan would be left with a shell and a company with a very bad reputation. Employees would leave in a mass exodus and then it would just be a fire-sale situation. That’s worst case, of course, but it could happen.”
I swallow the lump in my throat. I never liked gambling and I’m terrible at taking risks. This is a decision that I’m glad isn’t mine to make. And I thought my life was tough.
“So you think I should negotiate with this bitch and tell her she can take a million bucks of my dad’s death money, so that she’ll just go down easy?”
“Yes. And so that we can turn over the evidence that we found and have her charged criminally for what she’s done sooner rather than later.”
“You’ll do that anyway, right?”
“Of course. We’re obligated to do it. It’s a timing thing.”
“Did she try to bribe you into not doing it at all?” Quin asks, sneering.
The lawyers look at each other, tight smiles on both their faces, before the older one responds. “There were … several rounds of negotiation that went back and forth to get us to this point.”
“I knew it,” Quin whispers.
I nod across the table at her. She and I are definitely thinking the same thing about this sorry excuse for a woman. She needs to be in that grave that Teagan dug. I wonder if there’s room for two.
“I need a minute to discuss this with my family. Would you mind?” Teagan asks, looking at the lawyers and then the door.
“Not at all. Just press zero on that phone and get the receptionist on the line when you’re ready.”
As soon as they’ve left the room, Teagan turns in her chair to face all of us. “So, what do you guys think? Should I take what I can get and walk away or tell her to go fuck herself?”
Quin answers first. “Tell her to go fuck herself and take the money.”
Teagan smiles. “Oh, she’ll definitely get a few parting words from me, that’s a given.”
“I think you should take what you can get now and wait for the rest later,” Mick says. “A million bucks is a lot of money, but it’s a drop in the bucket compared to what you could have with no fight.”
“I agree.” Colin nods as he continues. “I mean, I’m all for fighting when it’s worth it, but not in this case. Better to take the bird in the hand.”
Mick turns to his brother. “Since when are you an advocate for peace?”
“Shut up, dick.”
Mick sees his brother’s hand under the table by my knee and then looks at me. “Ohhhh, I get it. Never mind.”
Colin scowls at him but doesn’t rise to the bait. I squeeze his fingers and he looks at me, his growl turning into a slight smile. Our happy bubble is back, floating around us and keeping the ugliness out. For the first time in a long time I don’t feel like I’m alone in battling the bad news that keeps coming at me.
“What do you think, Alissa?” Teagan asks. Suddenly all eyes are on me.
“Me? What do I think?”
“Yeah, you. I mean, would you take a small risk now, do the hard thing, and hope it all works out in the end, or would you just stick to your guns and take nothing, no matter what terrible things could happen and hope it all works out?”
I frown at her, wondering if I’m imagining the double meaning I sense in her words.
The words drag out of me as I wait for the trap to open beneath me. “I … would … take … a … risk…?”
“And…?” she pushes me.
I give up on waiting for the trap to be sprung. Nothing’s going to stop Teagan from doing what she wants to do anyway. I roll my eyes. “Take the four million and the shares of stock and then give everything to the DA immediately. Get her arrested and her accounts blocked before she has a chance to spend any of it.”
Teagan nods, and turns her attention to her boyfriend, making me think my paranoia was unfounded. “What about you, babe? What do you think?” She rests her hands on Rebel’s knees.
“Take the money. Take the company. Take her down. In that order.”
She leans in and kisses him. “That’s my man.”
She turns around and faces us again. “The family has spoken. Bring on the suits.”
Quin leans over and presses zero, waiting for the receptionist to answer.
“And while we’re here in the land of legal ass-kicking,” Teagan says, her eyes sparkling, “we can get Alissa to talk to their family law division and maybe the criminal law guys and get the ball rolling for her stuff. Just a little risk. That’s all it’ll take.”
Apparently my paranoia was not unfounded. My jaw drops open as I look at the faces around me. None of them look surprised. Not even Colin.
“What the …” I huff out my annoyance. “Ambushed. I’ve been ambushed!” I shove Colin. “And you’re in on it, you jerk.”
“Nah, babe, it’s not like that.”
I roll my chair away from him and the table. “Go to hell, Colin. Don’t talk to me.”
Before I can work myself up into a serious lather, the lawyers are back and then we’re witnesses to Teagan being caught up in a whirlwind of phone calls, planning and paper-signing. Partway through the process, a woman in a black suit and pink blouse sticks her head into the room and signals to me. “Can I see you for a moment?”
I glare at Teagan, Quin, and Colin, but get up from my chair an
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
“HI, I’M NATALIE,” SHE SAYS over her shoulder as she swishes down the hallway, her pantyhose and skirt announcing her arrival long before she’s at her destination. “I specialize in family law. I hear you need some legal advice.” She stops outside an office and gestures for me to go in ahead of her. There’s a desk with two chairs on one side and a single, high-backed, leather one on the other. Tasteful art decorates the walls and files are stacked neatly on a table behind the desk, just under a large window.
I’m tempted to throw a tantrum out here in the hallway, but decide it’s best if I do it in private. This Natalie person has a lot to learn about ambushing pregnant ladies, and I’m not afraid to educate her on that.
She shuts the door behind us and sits down across from me. Before I can even open up my mouth, she starts talking way too fast for me to get a word in edgewise.
“So, your name’s Alissa, you’re twenty-one, you’re a year away from a college degree, you were raped, you’re pregnant, you’re afraid your child’s father is going to come after you and take your baby away, and you’re without any money to care for your child who’ll be born in the next few weeks. How am I doing so far?”
My ears are ringing so badly, I’m worried for my health. Does an aneurism give advance notice before it blows up in a person’s brain? Can just hearing something dreadfully awful kill a person?
“Ahhh … you … ahhh … that’s … that’s none of your business,” I finally manage to say. Sweat pops out on my forehead and upper lip. I grip the arms of the chair to keep myself from swinging out at everything on top of her desk. I could so totally sweep it all onto the floor right now, just like in the movies.
“I hear ya.” She puts up her hands like stop signs. “I’ve been through it myself.” She presses her fingertips onto the top of her desk. “I know how angry you are. How helpless you feel. How pissed you probably are that your friends shared your personal tragedy with me, some stranger in an office you don’t want to be sitting in right now.” She leans back in her chair and rests her hands on the arms of it.