Page 13 of The Heiress

The Roark Report (yes, that’s what I was calling it now) was huge. I skipped a lot of the details on factory conditions and equal pay, and a small part of me felt like a bad person for that, but I needed to focus on the details that mattered to me. For now, anyway.

Georgia Stroman Roark was the last living direct descendant (except maybe forme?) of the Stroman family. Yeah,thatStroman family. The stupidly wealthy family from the Gilded Age of American dynasties. They came over as colonists and quickly made a small fortune in construction. They stuck their fingers in all the right places, growing that fortune in railroads, shipping, and eventually oil, becoming the second richest family in America behind the Vanderbilt’s. They maintained a fabulous fortune by building planes and becoming one of the first defense contractors of the modern era.

That’s when Georgia married Bernard Roark and the gilded reputation and wealth of one dynasty combined with the newer money of the Roark family. As a whole, the Roarks were the fourth richest family when Georgia and Bernard wed. They made their money by being the cheaper technological alternative to the more famous name brands.

Bringing those two families together was what changed everything. The companies eventually merged into Roark-Stroman Corp, one arm of the company outcompeting most of the field in terms of cutting-edge defense. The other arm of the company leapfrogged from second best tech, to pioneering the next generation.

It sounded like fairytale success. An American princess and prince married, finding even greater riches, and living happily ever after.

Except they didn’t.

A whole bunch of family members died, Bernard stripped Stroman from the name of the company, and seemed to run roughshod over the whole company for a while, at which point Georgia appears to have wrangled control of the original Stroman Corp back from her husband.

A husband who then died of a heart attack. It should be noted the conspiracy theorists believehewas murdered and it was made tolooklike a heart attack.

Which left Georgia solely in control of the Roark empire, and that was slightly ironic since it was half hers in the first place but her name was nowhere to be found.

I had so many questions. Did all those people die by accident or were they murdered? Was I kidnapped? Or was there something more sinister involved. No one ever ransomed Baby Victoria. She simply…vanished.

There was only one member left of the second richest family in the country. Was that enticing enough for someone else, like the Feyereisen brothers, to come sniffing around, and did that mean someone, inside the family or out, thought it was more than worth it to murder?

* * *

I fellasleep as the sun was coming up. Basically, I had a shitty night of sleep, which was probably why I woke up really confused. The light was wrong, the bed was wrong, the sounds were wrong. Where was I?

It took me a minute to figure it out. Granted, I didn’t open my eyes, move, or attempt to lift my head because of the pounding, but it still seemed to take way too long to realize where I was.

And then another whole minute before I figured out that the sounds were Jace and Hazel in the kitchen.

What time was it? Where was my phone? Did I care?

Nope. I sure didn’t. Instead I closed my eyes and took my time waking up because I really didn’t have a choice. My body refused to get moving and my eyes weren’t too excited by the whole opening concept.

In fact, I probably would have drifted right back to sleep if I hadn’t caught part of the muffled conversation.

“She’s not the most forthcoming person and she definitely doesn’t gossip, but I find it fascinating that in all the years I’ve known her, she’s never mentioned you. Not once.”

My eyes flew open. They were talking about me. I also cringed because yeah, I totally erased Jace. Not from my memories, but it was too hard—okay it was toopainful—to explain that I had a complete falling out with my best friend. It was so much easier to just glaze over childhood crap and focus on the present.

But I never stopped thinking about him. And now I realized that sealing over that part of my life, never talking about it, was probably part of what blew it up into such a huge disaster. Maybe we could have fixed things if I’d apologized years ago.

Or maybe we couldn’t. I didn’t know and now my current best friend was talking to my old best friend.

“That is interesting,” Jace replied in true, evasive, Jace form.

“She wouldn’t gossip much last night either. Who hurt who?” I pictured her cracking her knuckles. My dear sweet Hazel. How I do love you.

“I think it’s fair to say we hurt each other.”

And that made my chest ache. I rubbed it but the pain didn’t subside. Regardless of what happened today, I needed to properly apologize.

“She’s alone now,” Hazel said, “so whatever crap you two had in the past, I suggest you put it aside or fix it or whatever needs doing. If you’re so important she kept you a secret from me, you’ve got to bereallyimportant. She’ll need both of us.”

I almost missed Jace’s reply because tears started streaking out of both my eyes at the same time as a sob broke free. I grabbed a pillow and shoved it over my face.

I hated hearing the wordalone.Sure it was mostly true, but did it need to be repeated so damn much?

I removed the pillow, wiped my eyes, and sat up just as Jace spoke.

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