Wicked Need (The Wicked Horse Series Book 3)(36)
“Come on. His office is this way,” Cat whispers, reaching back for my hand to pull me toward the stairs.
I immediately place my palm against hers, but ask, “Why are you whispering?”
“I don’t know,” she rasps back with a giggle. “I guess because I’m not sure if I’m actually breaking and entering, or not.”
“Let’s assume not and talk in our normal voices,” I prod her. Although she’s cute as f*ck doing that, it’s also setting me on edge a bit, making me feel like we shouldn’t be here, and I’d rather take the optimistic route that we are definitely allowed.
Cat had assured me there was no full-time staff who lived in the house. While Samuel employed a chef, housekeeper, and an attendant for his personal needs, none of those employees lived in residence. As far as we knew, Kevin was still back in Jackson, probably never suspecting Cat would come here to search the house. Richard was probably oblivious to everything but we didn’t know that for sure. Cat decided not to reach out to him, mainly because she figured he wasn’t going to help her. He may not have any clue what Kevin was doing from Jackson, but then again, he might have full knowledge. We’d never know, so why alert him any further that Cat was questioning the validity of the will?
Now, it certainly can’t be helped she let Kevin know she was questioning it, but we’re sort of banking on his ego and his complete underestimation of Cat to keep him happily in the dark. So if we’re lucky, he’s probably on a fishing trip right now on the Snake River. Cat says that’s one of the reason’s he goes to Jackson, and if there’s a God above, maybe he’ll fall out of the f*cking boat and drown.
Cat leads me up a curved staircase done in deep mahogany to a large second-floor landing. Hallways branch left and right… entryways into the wings of the house.
“My room was that way.” She points to the right, and then back to the left. “Samuel’s that way.”
I find it interesting she referenced her room in the past tense. Not sure if that’s because she doesn’t believe this house is hers or that she doesn’t intend to come back here regardless. I’ll ask her about that later, but for now, I follow her straight ahead from the landing to a set of double doors that she pushes open to a huge office.
It’s what I would expect of an egomaniac, billionaire hotelier. Expensively paneled walls, luxurious silk rugs, ornately carved desk, and the faint musk of cigars in the air.
“Samuel spent a lot of time in here,” Cat murmurs in a grateful tone as she drops my hand and walks in. Glad he spent time in here and not bothering her, I’m sure.
She heads straight for his desk and pulls back the massive leather chair on wheels so she can sit down in it. Turning to a side drawer, she pulls it open and starts rifling through. I walk up to her and stand behind the chair to the side, watching her progress. She pulls out a thick pack of stapled papers and hands them to me, saying, “Our pre-nup. The will trumps anything in the pre-nup as best I can remember, but we should take pictures of this as well.”
Before we came in here, we agreed we wouldn’t take any documents with us. Our main goal was to verify if the will cutting Cat out existed, and to look at the current will if we could find it. Because there’s not a copier in Samuel’s office, we’ll have to take a picture of each page with her iPhone.
I hold the pre-nup without looking at it. I don’t care what deal Cat made with her devil of a husband. I only care about her not getting screwed over right now.
“Bingo,” she shouts with glee and pulls out another thick document. She lays it on the desk, and I step in closer to look at it over her shoulder. It’s titled “Revocable Trust Agreement and Pour-Over Will”.
“Quite a fancy name for a will,” I mutter.
She nods. “Trust agreement… will… I’m assuming they’re just different names for the same thing; how to distribute his estate.”
Cat starts to skim through it, her finger sliding down the page as she scans and flips pages.
“Kevin is the trustee, but I knew that. Just means he’ll administer the estate. Blah, blah, blah, blah,” she says as she breezes past paragraphs entitled Debts & Expenses and Administrative Powers of Fiduciaries. My eyes actually start to cross when her finger stops and she says, “This is the paragraph.”
I lean over closer and see the word Residuary. Cat reads out loud, “Upon my death, I direct my trustee to transfer five-million dollars to my wife, Catherine Lyons Vaughn. Pursuant to our pre-nuptial agreement, she will have no ownership rights or interests in any of my real property at the time of my death, with the exception of the house in Jackson, Wyoming. I further direct my trustee to ensure transfer of title and deed of said property to my wife.”
“Did you know that was in his will?” I ask her.
She nods. “Not the exact details, but he told me he would leave me with enough money to sustain me as well as a house. I didn’t know it would be the Jackson house. I suppose that was his way of reminding me in death how much he loved taking me there.”
I wince at the bitterness in her voice. There’s no way she’d ever want to stay in a place that held such terrible memories for her.
Cat flips quickly through the rest of the document to the very end, where I can see the original ink of Samuel’s signature as well as a notary public seal.