Marriage of Inconvenience Read online

  Marriage of Inconvenience

  Knitting in the City Book #7

  Penny Reid

  www.pennyreid.ninja

  Contents

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Part II

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Other books by Penny Reid

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, rants, facts, contrivances, and incidents are either the product of the author’s questionable imagination or are used factitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living, dead, or undead), events, or locales is entirely coincidental, if not somewhat disturbing and/or concerning.

  Copyright © 2018 by Penny Reid; All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, photographed, instagrammed, tweeted, twittered, twatted, tumbled, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without explicit written permission from the author.

  Caped Publishing

  Made in the United States of America

  eBook Edition: January 2018

  ISBN 978-1-942874-26-3

  Dedication

  The end is always a beginning.

  Part I

  What Happens in Chicago, Stays in Chicago

  Chapter One

  Marriage: The legal union of a couple as spouses. The basic elements of a marriage are: (1) the parties' legal ability to marry each other, (2) mutual consent of the parties, and (3) a marriage contract as required by law.

  —Wex Legal Dictionary

  **Kat**

  What did you just say?”

  My sharp question earned me a sharp look from Ms. Opal. She eyed me from across the room. Mouth pinched into a disapproving pucker, my coworker’s gaze lingered on the cell in my hand. Ms. Opal didn’t do this often—send me disapproving looks—just whenever I spoke too loudly. Or laughed. Or smiled. Or showed any emotion.

  None of which I did with any frequency.

  “Sorry,” I said to her, even though my sharp question hadn’t been directed to Ms. Opal.

  It had been directed to the person on the other side of my call. The unexpectedly disastrous, panic-inducing call.

  I heard a chair creak, and then he repeated, “He’s planning to have you committed.”

  “Please wait,” I whispered, dipping my chin to my chest, allowing my hair to fall forward. Blocking my face from Ms. Opal and anyone else who might walk through our shared space, I whispered, “Let me call you back. I’m at work.”

  Uncle Eugene huffed, the sound ripe with impatience. “At work.”

  “Yes. At work. As in my job.”

  “Your job.” His words were as flat as matzo.

  “Please give me five minutes. Thank you,” I said on a rush.

  Not waiting for his response, I ended the call and clutched my cell to my chest. I stared unseeingly at the dark, solid wood surface of my desk while trying very, very hard not to FREAK THE FREAKITY FREAK OUT!

  Oh God, oh God, oh God. What am I going to do? Why now? Why—

  “Kat?”

  I stiffened, instinctively straightening my spine, and managed a raspy, “Yes, Ms. Opal?”

  I sensed the older woman hesitate, and felt her disapproving eyes move over me. I was familiar with this look of hers. It was the kind of look I imagined mothers gave their kids during teenage years. The kind of look parents everywhere administered to children when they were acting like a fool, as I sometimes caught Ms. Opal muttering under her breath.

  Struggling to paste on my polite smile of perpetual calm, I glanced at the older woman. We’d been working together in the same space for going on five years and I’d grown accustomed to her pointed looks, usually. But today, as Ms. Opal lifted her eyebrows and narrowed her eyes, my throat tightened and my cheeks heated.

  I was officially off-kilter.

  Discovering one’s cousin wishes to send thee away to a nunnery will do that. And by nunnery, I mean a mental hospital. And by send away, I mean lock me away forever if he can manage it.

  As far as coworkers went, I liked Ms. Opal a lot. I appreciated her exacting nature. We were the two highest-ranking administrative employees in the firm, and we worked well together. She was no-nonsense, dedicated, and never gossiped. The woman was always five minutes early and fully prepared for all meetings. Sometimes I thought she liked me too, like the time she came back from vacation and discovered I’d organized the copy room according to her preferred design. She hadn’t given me a pointed look after that for a full six weeks.

  Presently, she cleared her throat. “I need a few number-ten envelopes from the supply closet. Will you please retrieve them for me? I’ll cover your desk.”

  Startled, I stared at her. She was still giving me a pointed look, but even through the wild jungle of my panic I recognized that it wasn’t a look of disappointment. She seemed concerned.

  “Yes. I will.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” Forcing myself to nod, I stood from my desk. As my chair made a clumsy scraping noise against the floor, I darted out of our shared office. It wasn’t until I was three cubicles away from the supply closet, and one of the senior architects gave me a weird side-eye, that I realized I hadn’t stopped nodding or clutching my phone.

  It didn’t matter.

  Maybe nothing mattered.

  Maybe not even cheese mattered.

  Ceasing my inane nodding, I redirected my attention to my sleeve, fiddling with the buttons in order to avoid eye contact. I then pulled at the keys attached to my waist and unlocked the closet. Once inside, I shut the door behind me and flicked on the light, hoping none of the staff architects had spotted my mad dash.

  Architects were like junkies around office supplies, insatiable. I didn’t understand their preoccupation with mechanical pencils and graph paper, especially since all their work and renderings were done using computer models. Regardless, we could never keep either in stock.

  I once had a junior architect buy me a fruit basket for a packet of highlighters. I felt like saying, Dude. Anyone can buy highlighters. Just go to an office supply store. Instead, I wrote her a thank you note.

  Staring at the screen of my phone, I pushed past the rising tide of fear and redialed Uncle Eugene’s number.

  He picked up the phone immediately. “Hello?”

  “Hello,” I said. Waited. When he was quiet, I added, “It’s me. It’s Kat.”

  “Yes. I know.”

  I waited again. When he said nothing else, I asked, “What am I going to do? Please tell me what to do.”

  “You don’t have many options.” He sounded grim, but then he always did. I appreciated his consistency.

  Eugene Marks wasn’t really my uncle. He was my family’s lawyer, but I’d known him since I was a kid, and he’d always been nice to me. Grim, but nice. The bar had been set so low by my blood relative
s, to the extent that Uncle Eugene had been my favorite person growing up. I always remembered his birthday with a hand-stamped card and an edible bouquet of mostly pineapple. Pineapple was his favorite.

  “Please, tell me my options.” I paced within the small closet.

  “Fine. First option: you allow your cousin to become the guardian of your person and your property. He will promptly commit you, take control of your inheritance when the time comes—specifically, your controlling shares in Caravel Pharmaceuticals—and you may spend the next several years institutionalized. He’ll have control of your accounts and finances, therefore you’ll have no funds for legal representation.”

  See? Grim, right?

  “Please explain to me how any of this is possible. I’ve been—voluntarily—going to counseling for just over two years now. I earned my GED, and my AA all on my own. Now I’m putting myself through the part-time business program at the University of Chicago, maintaining a 3.9 GPA while working full time.”

  “Yes. Even though some of those actions will work in your favor, it won’t be enough.”

  “Please explain.”

  “Firstly, you aren’t ready to lead a multi-national pharmaceutical empire.”

  “I agree. Of course I’m not ready.” I kept my tone calm, firmly dispassionate. “But I have been flying there two weekends a month, haven’t I? I’ve been meeting with you, the board, learning, preparing. As far as I know, the board is happy to vote my father’s shares as a collective until I reach thirty-one. That was the plan we all agreed to two years ago, and I’ve done everything asked of me.”

  “Except quit your job and move back to Boston.”

  I shook my head. “We’ve already discussed this.”

  What I didn’t say, what I hadn’t admitted to anyone, was that I didn’t know if I’d ever be ready to move back to Boston, to assume the role I’d been born into. I’d been stubborn, stalling, putting off the inevitable, because just the thought of living that life, living in that empty mansion, sequestered from the real world, filled me with misery.

  “Caleb has never been a proponent of the plan. He believes the shares should reside with the family, not with the board.” Eugene’s reminder was unnecessary.

  Whenever I saw my cousin, he mocked me, told me how I’d failed my family, and how I’d never be capable of leading the company. He’s say I was too shy. Too inexperienced. Too timid. Crazy like my mother. His favorite taunt was that I could snap at any time.

  I wasn’t shy. He mistook my silence for timidity. I saw no reason to converse with people I didn’t like and the truth was I didn’t like him. Just thinking about the weasel made me want to throw spoiled milk on his weasel face. And then heft loaves of maggoty pound cake at his weasel face. And then rotten tomatoes. And then drown him in a vat of sewage. And then bring him back to life just to burn him in a dumpster full of dead rat carcasses . . .

  I might have unresolved anger issues.

  That said, on the bright side, dealing with weasel-like Caleb and his weasel face had forced me to become more assertive. The intensity of my desire to prove him wrong was 49 percent of the reason why I’d stayed the course over the last two years.

  “Whether that . . . Caleb is pleased with the plan or not makes no difference,” I seethed through clenched teeth, acknowledging the uncomfortable spike in my blood pressure for what it was, an uncharacteristic display of emotion. “I am Rebekah and Zachariah’s child. He is not.”

  “Yes. But Caleb is your closest living relative. Well, closest relative who is not institutionalized.”

  I had to swallow my sorrow before I could respond. “How is that relevant?”

  “He will make the case that you, like your parents, are unstable.”

  “Again, please explain to me how he can make a case that I’m unstable.”

  “Because he will, and he’ll win. He’ll use your voluntary dilution of responsibility—handing over voting control to the board—as proof of your instability.”

  “No—”

  “Try to look at this from a judge’s perspective. You are the sole heiress to the single largest privately held pharmaceutical fortune in the world, which employs over one hundred thousand people across four continents. You choose to be a secretary in Chicago and haven’t accepted a single cent from your family in over seven years. You can’t just be ‘stable.’ Your mental health must be above reproach, because there’s too much at stake.”

  “Begging your pardon, but I’m not just a secretary.” I seriously, seriously despised it when people called secretaries and administrative professionals just a secretary. Being a secretary was a multitasking marathon, a daily gauntlet of making everyone happy all the time. “I am the executive assistant to the CEO. Not taking money from people doesn’t make me crazy, but I will point out that I do allow reimbursement for my travel expenses to and from Boston.”

  “Family history is not in your favor. Your mother—the last heiress in your position—was diagnosed with schizophrenia shortly after your birth, close to the age you are now. She was in and out of treatment facilities until she was committed by your father when you were five. You were hospitalized as a teenager for a suicide attempt and diagnosed with bipolar disorder—”

  “I didn’t try to kill myself and I definitely don’t have bipolar disorder. I’ve been seeing a therapist—”

  “You refused treatment at fifteen and ran away from home. You lived on the streets for almost three years. You have a history of illicit drug use, engaging in promiscuous and risky behaviors—”

  “That’s not—” My face burned brighter.

  “Again, you’ve refused to move back to Boston. You’ve refused help from your family.”

  I snorted at this—another burst of uncharacteristic emotion—because bitterness burned my throat. By “family,” he meant Caleb. Help from my “family” was no help at all.

  “All of this has been well documented by your cousin, and I know he has a parade of witnesses to support this version of events.”

  An agitated laugh tumbled from my lips and I clamped a hand over my mouth.

  Okay.

  I was really losing it.

  I needed to calm down.

  I told myself to calm down.

  “I have witnesses, too. I have friends here, people who will speak to my character and stability.”

  “But you won’t have access to the funds. You won’t have money to pay a legal team to fight this because—as I said—he will have control of the accounts as your guardian. We can try to stay ahead of Caleb, start shifting the money under your control now, but at this point it will be too late. The wheels are already in motion, the accounts will be frozen.”

  “But you’re the trustee! You have control of the—”

  “I won’t. It’s too late.”

  “What do you mean it’s too late?”

  Eugene hesitated, finally saying, “Trust me, it’s too late.”

  I struggled with my composure. “Fine. It’s too late. I don’t like this option.”

  “I didn’t think you would.” His chair creaked again. I was going to have to call his assistant about getting that chair oiled.

  “What is my next option?” Proud of the deceptive calm of my voice, I released a slow exhale.

  “Option two: you execute a medical power of attorney preemptively to someone close to you, but your cousin will definitely contest that appointment.”

  The panic began to recede, finally. This was good news. “Oh. Okay.”

  “Not okay.”

  “Why? That’s better than option one.”

  “Yes, but not by much.”

  “Why not by much?”

  “At best it’ll only buy you some time. When I say Caleb is motivated, I mean he is motivated. He’s not going to stop until you’re under his thumb. Voluntarily assigning someone your medical power of attorney is basically admitting you’re not mentally competent to make your own decisions. Most judges will agree that a family member
has priority and is better suited in this role than a friend selected by the incompetent person. Plus, you would be subjecting this friend to intense scrutiny and litigation.”

  I stopped pacing. “What about option three?”

  “Which option is that?”

  “You tell me.” There had to be an option three, because neither option one nor two were acceptable.

  He was quiet for a long moment, and then said very, very grimly, “I assume you are considering the transfer of your shares to Caleb? A buyout?”

  My gut response was, hell no. Not only was Caleb a terrible cousin, I was convinced he was a terrible human. For the last several months, whenever I visited Caravel headquarters and reviewed division earnings, I’d always left with a creeping notion that something wasn’t right. The numbers added up, but they were too good to be true.

  Profits were soaring with Caleb as the CEO, which meant the board was ecstatic. Yet, the sudden sharp profit margin concerned me. We’d had no new properties come to market in five years, spending in drug development was down, and I’d identified obvious inefficiencies in our clinical trials subdivisions. Vague revenue reports from several of the most lucrative divisions culminated in a nebulous sense of anxiety about executive operations.