Read Online Rising by Kassanna - Free Book Online Page B

one who helped you when you were in the cotillion. Think about it.”
    Smugness filled the earpiece as Charlotte continued. “Dwayne realized his mistake and returned to me. The only reason we took so long to tell you was because we didn’t want to hurt you. All’s fair in love and war, after all. No hard feelings.”
    Savannah didn’t want to begin to decipher what really happened. This was her new start and she was free of the bullshit. It was beyond time to take ownership of her life. “Uh-huh. Charlotte, you have two choices. Push your wedding back until you can afford it, or ask Dwayne’s family to help pay for it.” She pressed the button to fold the convertible top back.
    “The bride’s family pays for the wedding. You act like I’m asking for so much. It’s not like you don’t have the money. God, a couple of grand is a drop in the bucket compared to the statements Daddy showed me. What a waste. The money your father left you was meant to be used, not socked away for heaven-knows-what calamity you can dream up. Let loose of the funds a little and help me out.” Charlotte’s tone tuned chilly. “You’re just proving what everyone has always said—that you are jealous of me and what I have.”
    “And what exactly is that?” Savannah chuckled. The conversation was becoming surreal.
    “That you’re envious of me because I will always be the swan and you will always be the ugly duckling.”
    “On that note I’m going to hang up now. Tell Della I said hello.” She ended the call. There was only so much vitriol she could absorb.
    She had no idea that Travis Regis, her biological father, had left her a trust, let alone the amount of it. Della was executor and never bothered to tell her. It was only by accident when she was home from class early that she picked up the mail and realized there was a bank statement with her name on it from a bank she wasn’t familiar with. Opening that document changed her life. After a few inquiries, she contacted the lawyer that executed the will and learned her grandmother from her father’s side had reached out to her. Della had always told her no one wanted her and that her dad’s relatives were happy to be rid of them.
    It was too late to contact the elderly woman who was her paternal grandmother, as she’d died a few years earlier. The surprise was she, too, had left Savannah an additional trust to be turned over to her on her thirty-fifth birthday. Savannah was the only child of an only child.
    The funds her father left her were supposed to be released to her on her twenty-first birthday. Savannah snorted. That never happened. By the time she figured out what was going on there wasn’t much left in the fund, a few thousand dollars, according to the bank. Della and Ronald had lived off first the interest, then the actual monies, and they had lived large. The house in Buckhead, the matching luxury sedans, as well as the house staff, had all been paid for from her trust fund. What they hadn’t used, Ronald lost in the stock market.
    She shook her head. When she graduated high school, she had a scholarship and what that didn’t cover, she busted her ass at menial jobs to make sure she had enough. Charlotte, a mediocre student at best, was handed her education, thanks to Savannah’s trust fund.
    When she finally chose to move, anger ate up her calm as she threw her clothes into suitcases. Her stepfather snatched up the ones she’d filled, claiming everything in the house was paid for by him and her mother. He told her that she could leave with the clothes on her back. She could still hear Ronald screaming at her as she took the one suitcase he hadn’t opened to yank her clothes out, and left. She should have left sooner. That was nine long, painful years ago, she reminded herself. Since then she’d worked with a therapist, graduated from law school, and had become a productive, contributing, not completely broken individual.
    Keep telling yourself that.
    She