Page 11 of Claimed By my Father's Enemies
I stare at the surface of the table where the low light collects and I let myself think about the Cross property. Where my family used to live.
The small house at the edge of the grounds. White paint peeling on the south side because my father never got around to it. By the time he got home from driving Conrad Cross wherever Conrad Cross wanted to go, it was dark and he was too tired.
My mother coming from the main house in the evening, still wearing her apron, her hands rough from the long hours. The way she'd sit at our kitchen table for ten minutes before she said anything, like she needed the silence to remember who she was outside that house.
And then she was gone. Heart stopped at forty-three. One morning she was humming at the stove. By noon my father was kneeling on the kitchen floor and Charlotte was crying in the hallway and I was calling an ambulance that was already too late.
My father unravelled after that. Slow at first, then all at once. He stopped eating. Stopped sleeping on schedule. Startedmissing turns, forgetting pickups, leaving the car running in the driveway.
Conrad Cross tracked the decline the way you'd track a stock in free fall. Waited until the liability exceeded the inconvenience, and then cut him loose. After years of service, no severance. Just one letter and one locked gate.
I swallowed my pride. Knocked on the door of the main house, stood in Conrad Cross's study and I begged.
My hands close into fists on my knees. The memory surfaces the way it always does when I let myself get this close to it. The sound of the belt clearing the loops, the specific whistle of it through the air, the bright clean impact across my shoulder and the back of my arm. I didn't make a sound. I was sixteen and I already understood that making a sound meant he won.
I need to hit something. Something that will absorb force and not break.
"Maybe it's time to let go." Carter's voice comes quiet. The bass drops away somewhere below us, a momentary gap between tracks, and in that silence his words carry the full weight of a man who has been watching me carry this for years. "Conrad is dead, Will."
The anger arrives clean and clarifying, stripping away everything except what matters.
"Have you forgotten what he did? When we started expanding into hotels, into what he considered his domain, he came after everything. Lobbied against our permits. Called in favors to block our financing. Went after our investors personally. Told them we were overleveraged, told them we had organized crime ties, told them whatever lie would stick."
I lean forward. The table is cool under my forearms. "We were in debt to a point where one bad quarter would have finished us. Remember that? You know how close we came.”
"I remember." Carter's voice doesn't rise. "And we prevailed. With hard work. With integrity. Look at what we built." He makes an encompassing gesture, and the implication is clear. The MH Group. Vanta where we are now, but also the restaurants, the hotels, the portfolio spanning three continents. "He slowed us down. He didn't stop us."
"So we should forget?” I can’t.
"I didn't say forget." Something in Carter's eyes sharpens, and for a moment I see the man underneath the patience, the one with his own private ledger of what Conrad Cross cost us. "I hope he is burning in hell for everything he did. But he is dead now. And there is nothing left to fight."
"There is one thing left." I say with a certainty I can feel in my bones. "And to do it, I need Cross Manor."
Adrian studies me with the kind of attention that makes people confess things they didn't plan to.
"What do you want it for?" Adrian asks.
"That's my business."
Adrian accepts this with a shrug that communicates both respect for the boundary and total intention to revisit it later.
"Well, if things go the way they seem to be going, you're going to need to buy it from Sienna. And from what I saw today..." He picks up his glass, turns it once in his hand. "She's not selling. That house means something to her."
The music below shifts. Heavier. The bass drops and the floor absorbs the impact and I feel it again, up through my feet and into my chest, steady as a second heartbeat.
There is only one move. If I want that house, I need to understand what kind of person she is now, what she's willing to negotiate. Everyone has a price. I need proximity. I need time.
"What did you say she does?" I ask.
Adrian's eyebrows lift slightly, reading the shift. "Landscape design. Small firm, but growing."
I think about the angles.
I turn to Carter. "The new hotel in Ojai. The Vale. Where are we on the landscape scope?"
I watch the assessment move through his expression, the brief resistance, the pragmatic override. "We've already contracted Sycamore Design. They're already on site. We can't back out now."
"I'm not saying back out entirely. Find additional work to do. Something that doesn't touch Sycamore's contract. Enough work to justify proximity, close enough to assess her."
