“Now you can be penniless and directionless, just like your little white trash whore,” Bernadette snickers heartlessly.
With a heavy sigh, Emmett nods, prompting the guy who had been restraining him to shove him towards the stack of papers and force the pen in his hand. In a painfully slow process, Liam flips through each page, pointing out where Emmett needs to sign and initial. It’s ridiculous. Like he’s selling him a car or a house. You’d never know by looking at Liam that I was being held at gunpoint in the corner of the room and that Emmett was signing away absolutely everything his father had left him.
Malcolm shoves me into Emmett’s arms with violent force once everything is signed. He leads me towards the door, stopping only once to turn back and look at what’s left of his family. They barely even look up to acknowledge him, much less say goodbye. It’s like he’s invisible now.
“Are you okay?” he asks me softly. I nod and look back at all of them, standing there and flipping through the newly-signed papers.
“So now what?” Emmett asks from the doorway.
“So now nothing,” his mother responds, waving her hand dismissively. “I’ve left a little bit of money in your bank. Not enough to survive on, but it will get you by until you figure something else out.”
“Maybe Ophelia will loan you some money,” Bernadette cackles.
“What…you’re disowning me?” Emmett asks earnestly. “You already have everything you wanted. Why cast me out like this?”
The snide grin fades from his mother’s face, turning into a cold, dead, and serious stare. She flicks her cigarette into an ashtray and prances evenly over to him, stopping near his ear. “Oh, son. You think I don’t know?” she hums quietly. “You think I don’t know about what you did to your father?”
“What are you talking about…” he stammers.
“Your little deal with Theo Nickelson,” she hisses. “You might as well have been holding the gun yourself. You killed your father.”
I can’t take it anymore. I can’t stand here while she tries to make Emmett feel bad after everything she’s done. “Well, if you’ve been up Liam’s ass this whole time anyway, just waiting for your chance to run the company,” I chime in, “why do you care what Emmett did? You said you were glad Thomas was gone.”
She shrugs cavalierly. “It doesn’t change the way things work around here. You can’t just take out the crown of the hierarchy around here and expect not to suffer the consequences.”
“You people are all seriously fucked up,” I blurt out.
“I knew what you did, Emmett,” Bernadette grunts resentfully. “I came and told Liam. He was the one who let Mom know.”
“I thought you were smarter than that, Emmett,” Liam scolds. “You know what happens to people who mess with the Elites. You know a thing or two about that yourself, don’t you, Ophelia? So now you’ll walk away with nothing.”
“And if I were you…I’d get out of town,” Malcolm adds. “Now the Elites will rise back to where we belong. And once the entire town is under our control again, the police, the school, everyone you pass on the street will know you’re blacklisted.”
“I thought you hated the Elites,” I remind him, feeling stupid for ever buying into his act that he was so different.
“Only because I wasn’t one of them.” He shrugs.
Liam nods in agreement. “We refused to be under Thomas Jameson’s rule.”
“My father and I have always known we could run things better than him,” Malcolm explains. “We planned to take your father down the same way everyone else was going down. But then Theo stepped in and started messing around. But thank him for us, by the way. Killing Thomas turned out to be a much more convenient outcome than just sending him to jail.”
“Why help me look into Bernadette’s phone data, then?” I ask in confusion. “If you knew she was here the whole time!”
“You two are a fucking mess.” He smirks. “It was too much fun playing with you. You made it so easy. You were so convinced Vivian was behind everything and that she was trying to steal Emmett from you. Pointing you in her direction was too entertaining to pass up.”
“The picture!” I gape, turning to Bernadette. “You took the picture!”
“Malcolm helped me doctor it,” she beams proudly, blowing at the file against her nails. “Like I said, we really did think you would figure things out sooner, Emmett. We were getting bored waiting for you to piece it all together. We decided to have a little fun with you in the process.”
“It just made you look that much more desperate to the cops,” Malcolm adds.
He pulls out his phone and begins playing a video of Emmett having his meltdown in the motel room. At the same time, Bernadette pulls out her phone and begins playing a video taken from outside the Jameson manor. It was right after the fake photo of Malcolm and I had been sent out over the Elites’ blacklist app. You can see his silhouette through the window flailing around his room like a madman, breaking everything in reach.
“Sooner or later, we figured we’d gather enough evidence of you cracking,” Bernadette explains. “So, if you did refuse to sign everything over, we could just tell our lawyers you were too mentally unstable to run Jameson Automobiles.”
“And rest assured, we will use that defense if you ever decide to come back after us for the company somehow,” his mother adds indifferently. “And since your father committed suicide…you know it runs in the family.” She suppresses a laugh. “It wouldn’t be that hard for people to believe you would take your own life, too.”
The weight of it crashes over both of us. Bernadette and Malcolm were just playing with us, taking every opportunity they could to make Emmett look like he had gone crazy. If we never barged in here, giving them the chance to use me as leverage, they would have gotten the company anyway. And now there’s nothing Emmett can do, or they will kill him and make it look like he did it to himself.
“Ironic, isn’t it, brother?” Bernadette sneers. “You helped Theo kill our father and passed it off as a suicide. And now that’s the exact same thing that will happen to you if you try to get what you were promised out of that deal.”
“So, this is all punishment for Dad.” He shakes his head in disgust.
“You punished him for your own weaknesses,” she scoffs. “He shouldn’t have had to die just because you weren’t man enough to handle him, to face up to who you had to be to fill his shoes.”
“Mom even admitted it…you didn’t know him the way we did,” Emmett defends. “If he had treated you the same way you…”
“I would have done exactly this,” she snaps. “Whatever it took to uphold our family’s legacy. I’m nothing like you. Never have been. I can do what needs to be done to protect our position and everything our family has worked so hard for.”
“You mean you can treat people like shit to get what you want,” I thunder over to her, which she meets with a dismissive smile and shrug.
We stand there in stunned silence at how cold and calculating they all are. Like it’s just a game of musical chairs with lots of money and power being thrown around, everyone waiting for their turn to sit in the biggest chair. Only lives are carelessly taken along the way, and no one seems to bat an eyelash. No wonder Emmett wasn’t more affected by his father’s death. Not only did he hate the man, but this is apparently an ordinary part of business in his family.
“Let’s go, Emmett.” I tug at his arm. “There’s nothing we can do.”
“Mom?” He hesitates one more time as we’re halfway out the door. He sounds like a scared little boy. My heart breaks for him as she flips through the newly-signed rights to her company and who knows what kind of money. She doesn’t even look up.
I pull Emmett along, wanting to take him as far away from them as we can get.
As soon as we’re outside, I look up and release a huge breath. My eyes shine over at Emmett, and of course, he looks at me like I’m crazy. He doesn’t think there’s anything to be happy about right now. He’s hurt and shocked and has every right to be. But I can see how this is for the best. The Hendersons would have always been waiting to strike, to take everything away from him. His mom and sister, too. Now it’s over and he can walk away.
His biggest problem is that he’ll have to worry about money now, like the rest of us. But with his charm and good looks, I don’t think he’ll have too much trouble figuring it out. If he was capable of running Jameson Automobiles, he can do so many other things just as well. I’m excited to watch him figure it all out.
“They can’t do this.” His voice cracks as I rush him back to the car.
“Here, let me drive.” I yank the keys from his hands. “I’ll take you wherever you want to go.”
Emmett doesn’t answer, so I just drive. I know it doesn’t really matter where we go. He’s too upset right now to care. But I drive to the motel he had been staying only because it is far enough outside of town. It may not be far, but we both need to be out of Jameson right now.