Inheritance Clause

Chapter Six

The morning after her dinner Ines spent with Julian was one on which she finally read over the actual language used in her own divorce petition, line by line, just as she would have done for any client, rather than merely skimming it the way she had previously skimmed her own life.

She came across the clause on page fourteen, hidden beneath a subsection title dry enough to cause most people to simply fail to notice it. The clause had not been one that she had written or had seen earlier, having been added at some point over the past three years and having escaped the attention of anyone at her own company — which could only mean that there had been an oversight or that someone had deliberately ensured it wouldn't be noticed.

If the trust is dissolved, all the protective provisions set up under the Reyes Family Trust Amendment will be declared null and void at the time of the final decree.

She did not know what the phrase meant. Before she had finished drinking her coffee she phoned the firm's records department, and forty minutes were required before they could even find the amendment, since it had not been filed under her name but under Damian's, the date being eleven days after the wedding which had never taken place—eleven days after the humiliation, and eleven days into the silent war which he had apparently begun without telling her.

She read it twice while standing at her kitchen counter and then a third time when she was sitting down, since standing suddenly didn't seem like something her legs were willing to continue doing.

After the amendment, a part of Caldwell's security arrangements—this including the personnel, the surveillance access, and three separate accounts which the documents vaguely referred to as "personal protection services"—were placed into a trust that provided legal protection for her, specifically her, in that the trust was arranged so subtly that if the marriage were to be dissolved the funding would also be quietly terminated without either of them ever having to mention it directly. He had constructed a shield for her eleven days after having broken her heart in public, and had hidden it so deeply within the trust documents that she would have agreed to it being cancelled without ever realizing it existed.

She considered the idea of phoning Priya and also the idea of phoning Sofia. Instead, since she didn't look into it too closely, she called Marcus.

On the second ring he answered, speaking in a low, careful voice as if he had been looking forward to the call all along. "You found it."

“You knew about this.”

I was involved in getting it arranged. There was a pause, followed by the sound of him moving to a quieter place, after which he continued. "I pointed out that it was risky to put it in writing at all, even if it was buried like that. He replied that he didn't care. He said that if anything ever happened to him before it was completed, he wanted a paper trail to show that he had tried."

“Tried to what?”

It will keep you safe without you in the slightest degree realising that you needed it—the same reason for all the other things he's done over the three years. Marcus's voice became a bit tighter. "Ines, I need you to grasp this and I need you actually to listen to me this time rather than treating it as another thing that Damian is using to manipulate you. Once you finalise this divorce, the protection will come to an end on the day the decree is signed—not at some later date, but that very day. Vivienne knows more about the trust's structure than almost anyone outside our team because her lawyers drafted half of the wording decades ago for a completely different purpose. She'll know precisely when it stops."

Therefore he is using my safety as a means of preventing the divorce.

He's not asking for anything at all; he's made it clear on more than one occasion that if you still wanted the divorce after you knew all the details, he would sign the papers without further comment and would think of some other way to protect you which wouldn't need your consent or your marriage. That's all he wanted—you should know what you're actually giving up before you give it up blindly, just as you did when you walked into all of this three years ago.

For a long time Ines sat there, the amendment forms spread out on her kitchen table alongside the folder that Marcus had given her days before, showing side by side two versions of the same three years — in one scenario a man abandoned her for no reason, and in the other he had, it seemed, spent every year since constructing an ever more complicated system for keeping her alive without her ever realizing the walls being built around her.

Why didn't he say any of this to me himself when I asked him in his office? He had every opportunity then.

He's taken three years to work out what you're permitted to be burdened with, and old habits don't just disappear even though you've finally come and asked the right questions. Marcus sighed, and there was a sense of weariness in the way he did. As far as I'm concerned, that instinct of his is precisely the one which will completely lose you if he doesn't get rid of it soon; I've said that to him, but he doesn't pay any attention to me on this matter.

Does Julian know about any of this—the trust, the protection, or any of it?

The silence lasted so long that Ines had the feeling her stomach tightened even before Marcus had replied.

Finally, he said, "I don't know." That is the honest answer. Julian has always been the unpredictable one in the family—not since he is dangerous in the way that his mother is—but because we have never been entirely certain which side he really understands that he is on. Damian doesn't trust him and I don't trust him completely either, though I have never seen anything that proves he shouldn't be trusted, which in a family like this is either a very good sign or a very patient one.

“That’s not reassuring.”

It wasn't meant to happen; rather, it was meant to be honest, since honestly, that sort of thing is rather scarce around here. A sound almost like a dry laugh. One should be careful with him—not because I know any particular thing, but because I don't, and in this family that's generally when difficulties arise.

She thanked him, then hung up and sat all by herself in the kitchen for a long time afterwards, the morning light moving slowly across the table and falling upon the paperwork which told two entirely different stories about the same man according to which page you began on.

Her phone made one buzz. Julian.

We're considering moving our dinner up; there's been a development with my mother's foundation gala on Friday—she's specifically requested that I invite you. She says it's time for the family to "reconnect properly" now that you're back in the picture. I know that must probably sound like a trap. I promise I asked her not to make it one.

Ines read it twice and noticed the cold, careful part of her brain—the same section which had earned her an entire career from interpreting precisely what people didn't say out loud—going over every aspect of an invitation coming from a woman who financed people who made problems vanish quietly, and doing so through a son who might be just what he appeared to be, all the way into a room full of people each of whom had some reason to want her either kept under control or got rid of.

She considered Damian's amendment, which was on page fourteen, the one providing protection that would disappear the moment she put her name to it.

When I first entered Vivienne Cross's house with my eyes open after a period of three years instead of having them closed.

I'll be there, she replied, and this time she sent it without delay.