Final Offer (Dreamland Billionaires, #3)(6)

I take a cleansing breath and continue reading.

Getting sober isn’t a goal, it’s a journey. YOUR journey. And as much as I wanted you to get healthy, I went about it all the wrong way. There isn’t a day that goes by when I don’t wonder what might have happened if I supported you rather than turned my back on you. Would you have been interested in finding your place within the company because you no longer resented its connection to me? Or would you have been excited to marry Alana and work on giving Se?ora Castillo all those grandkids she wanted?





There are a hundred different ways I want to show how I’m sorry, but my options are limited from the afterlife. Hopefully one day—if you pull yourself together and all—we can be reunited. But until then, my will is the best I can do.





So, to my little risk-taker, I have one thing to ask of you in exchange for 18% of the company shares and a twenty-five-billion-dollar inheritance:





Spend one last summer at the Lake Wisteria house before selling it by the second anniversary of my death.





I reread the sentence twice until everything clicks into place.

Oh, shit.

He wants me to live here with Lana.

Of course. And to make matters worse, as if they weren’t already, my grandpa puts the final nail in my coffin with a single request.

I ask that no one outside of your brothers and my lawyer knows the true reason behind selling the house until it is sold.





Fantastic. Whatever chance I had at appealing to Lana’s humanity or pocketbook is stolen away from me with one last wish from my grandfather. I swear he is probably sipping a strawberry margarita from the afterlife, gleefully watching my life implode.

Looks like all I need to do to earn my shares of the company and twenty-five billion dollars is convince Lana—the only woman in the world who would rather shoot my ass than save it—to let me sell the house.

Time to invest in a bulletproof vest.





3





ALANA





I slide the curtain back into place with a shaky hand as Cal’s taillights disappear down the driveway. Whatever semblance of control I had over my emotions breaks, reality punching me in the face with a set of brass knuckles.

Cal is back.

I want to cry. I want to yell. I want to send him running all the way back to Chicago.

Everything about seeing him again hurts. Like someone pulverized my heart until it is unrecognizable.

I hate how he still makes my chest ache from a simple smile, almost as much as I hate the way I wanted to pull him into my arms and beg him to never leave again.

Have you learned nothing after the last time?

I cut myself a little slack. Cal turned my life upside down again, and my mind is still trying to catch up. To ease the sick feeling building in my stomach that hasn’t gone away since he showed up at my doorstep, I swallow a few lungfuls of air.

He was never supposed to come back. The last time I saw him, he promised me as much.

Are you really surprised? Since when is he a man of his word?

I thought he would respect me and our past enough to honor his vow.

You were a fool.

No. I was desperate enough to believe him, even when he was in the middle of breaking my heart.



“Cal?”

He ignores me as he continues throwing clothes into the open suitcase on top of his bed.

I step inside his room and shut the door behind me. “Where are you going?”

He doesn’t so much as acknowledge me.

“What’s wrong?” I place my hand on his shoulder and give it a squeeze.

He tenses, choking the shirt caught within his clenched fist. “Not now, Alana.”

Alana? Since when does he call me by my full name?

I walk around him and drop onto the bed. “Why are you packing?”

“I’m leaving.” His voice comes out flat.

My brows tug together. “Did something come up in Chicago?”

“No.”

Something about the tension in his body and the way he avoids eye contact has my heart racing in my chest. “Okay…” I tuck my legs underneath me. “How long are you going to be gone for?”

He pauses his erratic packing. “I’m not coming back.”

My laugh quickly fades at the pinched expression on his face.

I rise onto my knees so we can be eye level with each other. “What’s going on? Did something happen at dinner with your grandpa?”

His fist tightens around a shirt. “I can’t do this anymore.”

“You can’t do what anymore?”

His gaze slides from his suitcase to my face. “Us.”

My chest feels like a lightning bolt split it in half. “What?” The broken whisper barely makes it past my lips.

God. It’s the same speech my dad gave my mom the day he abandoned our family. Except instead of watching my father pack his bags, it’s Cal.

I shake my head.

No. Cal isn’t your father. He would never abandon you like that, especially after he promised to love you forever.

“We should have never gotten together,” he says softly.

My eyes burn as if I kept them open while submerged in salt water. “What did you just say?”