Page 101 of Little Bird
“It doesn’t matter how we got up here or what those men think of you,” he grinds out. “We’re not here for your fucking fairy tale ending, little girl. I don’t have time for that shit.”
Right.
“What do you want?” I ask, kicking myself for not having a plan yet. I thought I had more time to come up with something, though.
Thought I’d go into this conversation with better weapons.
Like papers that say I’m no longer legally attached to Helen Matthews, and if I die, she doesn’t get anything I have.
“We want you home,” my mother answers, and now she’s not even trying to sound like she cares about me. “You belong in New York, not up here in the mountains. You have school and your future to think about. Your career. Your family.”
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at her words.
“My family? You’ve got to be joking. You haven’t cared about me since we got back to the city, and Johnny Massimo isn’t my family.”
My mother gets so close I can smell the coffee on her breath.
“Neither are those men.”
I take one step closer to her so we’re nose to nose, and give her my iciest glare. “They’re more family than you are. They love me more than you do. And I’m telling you right now that I’m not leaving. I’m staying here with the family I choose, and you can’t stop me.”
My mother snorts at that, but does take a step back, like she wasn’t expecting me to stand up to her and tell her to kick rocks.
Good. The girl I was before I came up here would have backed down from a fight with her. She would have avoided conflict at all costs. Sold her soul to make sure other people were happy. But I’ve changed since I arrived in Hawke’s Wood.
And I’m not the girl who backs down from a fight anymore.
“Try me, Mom,” I say quietly. “Try me and find out.”
She raises both eyebrows and looks at me like she’s never even seen me before. Then her expression goes even harder and colder. “Try you? I’ll do better than that. Johnny and I want you home, and we want it now. We want access to that little inheritance you know you’re getting. After that, you’re welcome to do whatever the fuck you want. But until you turn twenty-one, you belong to me. You know it, and I know it.”
“I don’t know anything of the sort,” I spit. “I haven’t belonged to you in years.”
“And yet the terms of your inheritance state very plainly that you have to live with me until you’re twenty-one, or you don’t get what he left you,” she replies quickly.
She’s right. My father named me in his will and I’m getting more than she did, but there are rules for it. I have to still share an address with her to get my inheritance, and if I don’t—if I move or die—everything goes to her.
I know what he left me, and why he left it to me rather than her. He was trying to give me the freedom he knew I wanted.
And I’ll be damned if I’m going to let her have something he wanted me to get.
It’s why I started the paperwork to legally divorce her and get out of that clause, and it’s why I’ve been pushing my attorney to get the paperwork filed so quickly. But as far as I know it’s been filed but not finalized, which means unless I live with her, I don’t get what my dad wanted me to have.
If I do go back to live with her, I have no doubt it will mean my life. Because the moment I’m dead, my inheritance is hers.
“We can ruin them, you know,” she says suddenly. “Their little business. All that stupid furniture. Hell, we can ruin the entire town if we want to. And it’ll be your fault. Your fault if we take down these men you think you love and the town they built. Of course, that doesn’t have to happen, if you come home with us. Come home, and I’ll let Gabe and Gunner keep everything they have. Stay, and I’ll make sure they lose it all.”
And there it is. The choice I knew might come down on my head. My mother is casually threatening Gabe and Gunner and everything they hold dear if I stay here. The town. Everyone’s livelihoods.
Their homes.
My own mother is ready to ruin everything just to get her hands on my inheritance.
And I can either stay here and ruin Gabe and Gunner’s lives, destroy them with my presence...
Or save them by deserting them again.
Gabe
