Read Online R Is for Rebel by Megan Mulry - Free Book Online Page B

for you, but I’m glad you’re taking a proprietary interest. It’s yours after all and you should do with it what you think best. I think Dad really believed that you would do something great, something more ambitious or risky than Claire, or Devon, or I would ever do.”
    â€œWell, I don’t know about that, but I won’t be buying any Aston Martins, so there’s that.” Max and Abby laughed together at their brother Devon’s extravagances.
    â€œI was planning on coming into town on Thursday, would that work?” Max offered.
    â€œThanks, Max. That would be perfect. What time shall I set up the appointment? Does nine o’clock work for you or is that too early?”
    â€œNine o’clock is perfect. That’ll give us a couple of hours to go over everything with the private bankers, and I can set up my other meetings for after lunch.”
    â€œA couple of hours? I thought it would just be… a half hour to look over a spreadsheet, or something.”
    â€œOr something. Hold on a sec.” Max said something quiet and gentle to Bronte, then walked across the hall to his office. Abby heard his footsteps and the sound of the door closing and pictured Max sitting down behind their father’s old desk, now his desk. “Listen, Abby, you need to prepare yourself. We all got the same five million pounds when we turned twenty-one, which was perfectly generous by any stretch of the imagination, but when father died, he split the remainder of his liquid assets equally five ways, between Mother and the four of us.” Max paused. “I know you know all of this, on some level, but you were so out of it at Father’s funeral and you chose not to come to the reading of the will, and, well, I get it, you were devastated. But if you’re serious about taking this on, as you should be, serious, I mean, then you need to face facts: You have a substantial fortune. The five million was the very tip of the iceberg, Abby. I’m not trying to be intimidating, but you’re an extremely wealthy woman. Your expenses have been laughably small—at one point, the bank actually called me and implied that Devon and I had secretly cut you out of your share, and we had to convince them that you managed to live quite happily on two thousand pounds a month, and that you preferred to reinvest all of your dividends. It wasn’t as if we were reaping any benefit from your monastic lifestyle.”
    Abby laughed quietly, and didn’t bother telling Max that she usually ended up giving away most of her monthly allowance also. Living frugally had started out as a game and had become a way of life. She enjoyed the freedom of knowing she could work on a farm or canvass for a charitable organization, that no matter what happened, she could be self-supporting. Especially when she was a teenager, she had nearly suffocated under the weight of her aversion to all that dirty money and the inherent perpetuation of the centuries-old elite patriarchy that defined her family, and by extension her country, and her world. The obvious fact that she was living proof that her father did not subscribe to the traditional ideas of primogeniture and male succession did not seem to enter her flawed adolescent reasoning. Her father was a lover of women: a lover of one woman in particular, and all women in general.
    â€œSo, give me a number, Max. What do I need to be prepared to hear?” Abby asked with trepidation.
    â€œYour share is probably now worth around thirty million pounds. Not including the properties, of course.”
    Abby’s voice was dry and hollow. “Of course.”
    â€œAbs?”
    â€œYeah?”
    â€œDon’t freak out.”
    â€œI’m not freaking out.”
    â€œYes, you are. I can hear it in your voice.”
    â€œOkay. I am freaking out a little.”
    â€œJust take it one step at a time. See if you can make the appointment with both Roger