Total pages in book: 121
Estimated words: 115198 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 576(@200wpm)___ 461(@250wpm)___ 384(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115198 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 576(@200wpm)___ 461(@250wpm)___ 384(@300wpm)
And at her mention of the trust and what Liam’s doing with his, I realize what this means. Liam said no to Ray. He chose himself. Ray could and will challenge the inheritance.
An idea sparks, sending hope spreading warm and electric through my veins. I think I know what to do. It’s going to be a gamble, but I know I wasn’t wrong about Liam’s siblings: they will always choose the money.
I reach for my purse and mouth to my dad that I have to go but I’ll fill him in as soon as I can.
“Blaire,” I say, opening my Uber app, “I need to tell you something, and you’re not going to like it. But first… do you know where Liam lives?”
* * *
TURNS OUT, BLAIRE ONLY vaguely knows where Liam lives, and after I fill her in on the situation with the loophole and the trust and how she and Alex and all the Weston children could possibly lose all their money, she’s screaming too much to be very useful anyway.
Jake is more helpful. He replies to my text saying he has no idea what Liam’s address is, because every time he’s visited, Liam has picked him up at the airport.
Do you just float through life completely oblivious?
I mean yeah. Sort of
Wait—ok there’s a park near his place in Palo Alto
I think it’s called Hoover Park
And his house is on a cul de sac. Is that helpful?
Actually yes.
I will stop drawing this portrait of you with bad skin and a bald spot
I’m assuming some shit went down
Because when Dad got off the phone with him, he flipped
Yeah. You’re on a plane?
If so, I’m sure it’s being broadcast on whatever news you can get in your first-class airplane apartment
Do you know if he turned down the CEO job?
I think he did.
Fuck.
No, you know what? Good.
Fuck Dad.
I don’t know if this means Jake knows about the condition in the trust, but I don’t have time to worry about it, because my driver is pulling up in front of Terminal 2 at LAX.
I am insane, I know this, but I convince myself the information I have is enough to go on and buy a ticket at the Delta counter for a flight to San Jose leaving in two hours.
While waiting at my gate, I discover that nearly every residential street in Palo Alto is a cul de sac. But once I land, and once I get out of the taxi at Hoover Park, I realize with devastation how easy it will be to find Liam’s house.
I only have to follow the news vans.
Thirty-Four
ANNA
They are everywhere. Bumper-to-bumper all around the park and a few side streets, but they are especially packed down Byron, where I can only assume Liam lives. Follow the chaos seems to be the rule, and I weave between bodies, ignoring the urge to photobomb the people standing with microphones in front of cameras and yell that this is all made up, that there is no way on earth William Albert Weston would do any of this. But I resist because the last thing I want is for someone to ask whether I know Liam personally, and have a horde of reporters shoving microphones in my face.
A large cluster of journalists crowd around a dove-gray house with neat white trim. And there it is: Liam’s beat-up old Honda parked in the driveway. My heart does a painful kung fu move inside my chest.
He’s home.
I move with renewed determination through the crowd.
“Where does she think she’s going?” someone behind me asks with a snotty laugh.
“You can’t approach the door!” someone yells to me. “It’s considered private property!”
Another voice shouts, “We all have to wait for him to come out!”
But as I continue to walk, the tenor changes. I feel the wave of awareness move across the mass of bodies, hear a few people murmur my name, and I register my enormous mistake: I haven’t put my hood up. I didn’t hide my hair.
I haven’t been on Instagram in days, but everyone else at the island was posting constantly, and given that I am legally married to the hottest Weston sibling and given that the Westons were the celebrities of the entire vacation, it’s one hundred percent assured that my mostly inactive account with fifty-two followers has been tagged in many, many photos. Any journalist worth their salt knows everything there is to know about Liam, and that now includes me, and the shitstorm that happened at the wedding.
“Anna!” a man yells. “That’s Anna Green! That’s the wife!”
And from there, everything devolves into chaos. My name is shouted in a cacophony of voices so earsplitting it triggers a strange instinct to cry in panic. Mics are shoved in my face; hands come up to my shoulders, my back.
Do you have any comment about the scandal?