He pressed his lips together in an apologetic smile. “I can practically see the face you’re making right now, Andi. Believe me, I wish I could just lay it all out for you and explain this plain as day. Except I can’t. It’s like I said, the only way this works is if you two are confused as hell. So I’m going to just get to the list. Number one, watch a show in The Red Room. Two, experience bondage. Three, spend an hour in the sensory deprivation chamber. And four—this is the fun one—I want you to spend an entire night as Landon’s submissive. The real deal, too. All the bells and whistles.” He smiled, almost like he could see the disbelief and disgust on my face. “I know, super creepy. But hey, I’ve spent a large part of my life building three of the city’s most successful BDSM sex clubs. On the spectrum of perverted things I’ve done, this barely registers. And if you completely hate me right now, I think I’ll live. Oh wait. No, apparently I didn’t!” Grandpa laughed at his own joke.
“Is he serious?” I asked Landon.
Landon shook his head. He didn’t look even slightly amused. His eyes were practically burning holes in the screen.
“So,” Grandpa said. “I think that wraps it up. Oh. Last thing. Having a team of lawyers tag along to confirm that you complete the list would kind of make it awkward. So I’m putting my complete trust in you, Landon. You’re the only one with the authority to say whether Andi completed the list or not.”
Grandpa tapped his chin thoughtfully, then held up his finger. “Almost forgot! Landon, you’re most likely planning to do whatever you think would’ve pissed me off the most. But I did want to leave you with one mysterious nugget of information. Finish my list, and you’ll get a reward far greater than the club or money. Ignore the list, and you’ll always have to wonder what the surprise might have been. Hmm, very mysterious. Anyway, I’d better get back to being dead.”
The video abruptly cut off. Anger and outrage still churned inside me. My brain was still playing catchup—trying to confirm that I’d really heard everything I just thought I did.
I had to do all of those things or my entire inheritance went to a man I’d just met. There was no way that could be right. Could it?
“I didn’t even understand half of what was on that list,” I said quietly.
Landon gave no sign that he’d heard me.
“And he expects me to do all this weird, perverted stuff with you? What are you, his henchman?” My voice was getting louder as I spoke until I was almost yelling.
“I’m not a henchman,” Landon said. “I have two degrees from Yale in business and marketing.”
“Okay. He expects me to do all this weird, perverted stuff with his highly educated henchman?”
Landon ran his thumb across his stubble, then our eyes met. “I need to think about this.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I mean your grandfather just told me the only thing I need to do to claim my share of a multi-million-dollar hotel and the club I spent most of my life building is lie to the lawyers. If I say you refused to attempt the list, it’s all mine, right?”
I could only stare. That was how grandpa had made it sound. “And that’s what you’re going to do?” I asked quietly. “Ignore what he wanted and lie to the lawyers?”
He walked toward the doorway and stopped without turning. “I haven’t decided. But if this is the last time I see you, have a nice life, Andi Wainwright.”
“No wonder he hated you,” I yelled after him. “It was a blind guess, but I was grasping at anything I could to sting Landon back, even if it was just slightly.
He paused, head down. I thought he was going to say something, but after a few heartbeats, he stepped out into the hallway and left.Bree and Audria were waiting up for me in the lobby when I returned. All told, I’d only been gone about half an hour, which seemed hard to believe. It felt like my understanding of the world had been turned on its head, and an hour hadn’t even passed.
“That look on her face isn’t a good sign,” Bree said. She stood from the armchair she’d been sitting in.
Audria was still cross legged on the ground. She looked up from her notepad with a hint of interest. “What happened?”
I explained the entire encounter to them, leaving out the parts where I was embarrassingly attracted to the guy who clearly didn’t mind screwing me out of my inheritance. I may have also embellished a few moments here and there, just to make him sound worse.
“That doesn’t make sense,” Bree said.