Reaper's Heiress: A Billionaire Biker Romance

Mia POV Three days ago, I was supposed to become Mrs. Derek Holt. Instead, I was sitting on a curb in The Merchant District with a garbage bag between my feet and a wedding dress that had given up trying to be white about an hour into the rain. My left heel was somewhere behind me. I'd snapped it off myself because the uneven click of it was driving me insane, and I needed at least one thing today to go the way I wanted. The mascara was dry by now. I'd handled that part already, three days ago in a venue bathroom with two hundred guests on the other side of the door. I'd given myself eleven minutes, washed my face, walked back out and told the guests to go home. I hadn't cried since. Forty-three dollars. That's what I had left. Derek's name was on the apartment, on the car, on the savings account he'd "managed" for us. I let him do that, because I'd been an i***t in love who thought managing things together meant something other than him quietly taking it all. He hadn't called once since the wedding. Not to apologize. Not to explain. Just silence, like erasing me was easier than facing what he'd done. A black car pulled up like it had wandered into the wrong part of town. The man who got out looked the same way, silver hair, a suit that probably cost more than what was left in my bank account, and an umbrella he didn't bother opening for himself, just walked straight through the rain toward me. "Miss Calloway." "Do I know you?" I asked, confused. "Harlan Webb. I was your father's attorney." he replied. "My father's dead." "I know." He held out an envelope. "He asked me to find you." I stared at my name in my father's handwriting. Something tight lodged in my throat. "He's been dead for two years, Mr. Webb." "He left very specific instructions before he passed. Including when to deliver this, and where I'd find you." "And he knew I'd be sitting on a curb in a wet wedding dress?" "He said you would be exactly here." He went silent for a moment. "He also said you wouldn't be crying." I took the envelope with shaky hands and broke the seal. The letter was short, but every word hit like a punch. One page. My father's handwriting, small and certain. Mia Darling, I've rewritten this letter more times than I can count and there's still not enough paper to explain everything properly, so I'll tell you what matters. I'm sorry I didn't say this while I was alive. I had my reasons. I'm less sure of them now.* There's an address below. Go there. Show them your ring, say my name, nothing else. That will be enough.* I know this feels unsurvivable. I know you're not crying because you already did that and you don't repeat yourself. I know you're looking for the next step and can't find one.* This is the next step. Everything I built, I built it for you. You were never the girl who needed saving, Mia. I raised a war. Go start one. Love, Dad. I read it once. Then again, slower. The words blurred for a heartbeat before I forced them back into focus. "What's at this address," I said, not looking up. My voice was quieter than I wanted. "Your father's associates." "What kind of associate leaves a girl an address instead of just, I don't know, showing up themselves?" The frustration came out before i could stop it. "The kind who've been waiting eight months for the will to activate." Webb reached into his jacket again, and brought out a second envelope. "You'll need this when you arrive. Don't open it before then. The order matters legally." "You keep saying things matter legally like that's supposed to comfort me." "It wasn't meant to comfort you," he said gently. "It was meant to inform you." I almost laughed, but it came out broken. "You're not very good at this." "I'm an excellent attorney, Miss Calloway. I was never hired for bedside manner." That got an actual huff out of me, somewhere between a laugh and disbelief. "Did you know him well? My father?" Webb considered the question like it deserved more than a quick answer. "Better than most people knew him, I'd say. Not as well as he'd have liked, toward the end." "What's that supposed to mean?" My chest felt tight. "It means there are things I'm not permitted to tell you yet. Your father was very particular about sequence, but you'll understand soon enough." "Everyone keeps saying that. Soon enough. Not yet. You'll understand." I stood up, garbage bag in one hand, both envelopes in the other. "I'm getting a little tired of waiting for soon enough, Mr. Webb." "I imagine you are." He nodded towards the car. "There's a ride right here. I can take you directly. It's no trouble." "Which bus goes to The Ashfields." He blinked, surprised. "Excuse me?" "You heard me." "Miss Calloway, the car is right here. It's no trouble at all, you wouldn't have to—" he gestured vaguely at the dress, at all of it. "Mr. Webb. Which bus." He studied me for a second too long, like I was a puzzle he hadn't expected to get this morning. Then he told me. Number, stop, how far the walk was after. "Can I ask you something else," I said. "You can ask." "Should I be scared? Of whatever's at this address?" For the first time since he'd stepped out of that car, Webb looked like he was choosing his words with real care. "I think you should be prepared. There's a difference." "That's not an answer." "It's the only one I can give you right now." I thanked him for that much honesty at least and started toward the bus stop. Behind me, he called out one last time. "Miss Calloway," I turned. He stood there in the rain with his umbrella still closed, hands in his pockets now, looking less like a lawyer and more like a man who'd been waiting a long time to put something down. "Your father said one more thing when he gave me my instructions." "He said you'd refuse any help I offered." I didn't say anything to that. I just turned and kept walking, because if I opened my mouth right then I wasn't sure what would come out, and crying twice in one week felt like giving Derek and the entire city more credit than they deserved. The bus came in six minutes. I paid in coins scraped from the bottom of the bag and took a window seat. A woman across the aisle looked at the dress, opened her mouth, thought better of it. A kid near the back didn't have the same restraint, just stared until I looked back and he suddenly found his phone fascinating. Good. I didn't have the energy to tell a stranger that the wedding was over before the vows ever started. I turned my father's ring around my finger and watched Velthorn change outside the glass. Wide streets narrowing. Buildings getting older, shorter, more honest. The Ashfields rising up to meet me one block at a time. I thought about the last time I'd really talked to my father, really talked, not the small surface conversations we'd had toward the end when he kept canceling dinners and blaming work. He had called me on a Tuesday, out of nowhere, and asked if I was happy. Just that. Are you happy, Mia? I'd laughed and said of course, Dad, why are you asking, and he'd gone quiet for a second too long before saying no reason, just checking. I hadn't thought about that call in over two years. It came back to me now whole, every word of it, sitting on a bus in a ruined dress with his letter in my fist. He'd known something then. Whatever this was, whatever I was walking into, he'd known and hadn't told me, and he'd asked if I was happy instead, like that was the only thing he could actually do something about. Nobody on that bus knew any of this. They were sitting three feet from someone whose entire life had just been rewritten, and they had no idea. I folded the letter carefully and slipped it back into the envelope. Whatever waited for me in Ashfields, there was no turning back now. Three days ago, I'd lost everything. Maybe today was the day I found out why.