"This is Jeff - Harry emailed me to call him immediately."
"Certainly. Please hold."
I hold for less than 5 seconds before Harry picks up the phone. Harry's first name is actually Thaddeus, which is a family name. He goes by Harry.
"Jeff, we have a problem," he says, diving in. "Your in-laws want custody of Danny."
"No," I say. My heart rate is picking up. I'm squeezing my office phone so hard that I'm surprised that the plastic isn't bending out of shape.
"You know the part of your living will that I wasn't happy about?"
"That Danny's guardian would have control of his shares of the company? We told you why we did it. We wanted to make sure that if we were in comas or something, he'd always be taken care of."
"I knew you had good intentions, but your in-laws apparently know about the language in your living trust."
"But I'm alive...and I'm still the trustee of this self-settled trust."
"It's complicated," he says, and I can see him rubbing his forehead even though I can only hear his voice. "Your wife set things up in a way that opens us up to this sort of legal challenge. They've declared their intent to ask for primary custody of Danny in court."
"They can't do that. I'm his father."
"You can sue anybody for anything," Harry says softly. "The real question is whether you can win."
"I will never lose my son," I tell him. "And I don't care what it takes to keep him."
"You're going to have a hell of a fight."
My dead wife's parents are wealthy enough to battle me in court for years. But right now, I have Danny. If I need to take him out of the country, I will.
"What are we going to do?"
"I'm going to have a long talk with their lawyer about his intentions." Harry pauses again. "I have to tell you, it really doesn't look good. They're making a case that they'll be able to provide a more stable household with the two of them rather than just you." Silence. I am barely breathing. "And your wife is entitled to half of your share of the company. You have voting stock, as you know. So this isn't just a family affair."
I'm going to throw up. Right now, everything that I've built is in jeopardy. They're wealthy people, but they're insatiable. They'd take Danny's inheritance so that they could profit off of it. I tried to keep away from my in-laws as much as possible. My dead wife loved them better from a distance.
And now they wanted Danny.
Chapter 16
Proposal
Elia
Jeff comes home that night, he has a bag of takeout.
"What is that?"
"Mee goreng," he says. "I thought you might like some Malay food."
"Smells good," I say, smiling up at him. But there's a very heavy sadness in his eyes.
"Do you think I'm a good dad?" he asks abruptly.
"Um, sure?" I look at Danny, who is sleeping in the living room, his little feet moving restlessly.
"Someone is suing me for custody of my son...two someones." He shakes his head and drops a kiss on Danny's forehead. Danny's eyelids flutter a little before he settles back down. "I don't want to lose him."
"What basis do they have for stealing your child?"