Chapter 21

The moment Elise saw her oldest brother, she stopped being afraid. He looked like rescue itself.

“Yes,” she said, nodding quickly.

Julian had been working in his room when he heard footsteps outside. Only then had he remembered how frightened she had been of the dark in their previous life, and opened his door.

He said nothing about it. Instead, he came over, took the steaming bowl from her hands, and headed upstairs to the third floor.

The rim had been burning her fingers. With the bowl safely in his hands, Elise followed close behind him, feeling much better.

When she first came to the Whitmore house, she had hoped her brothers might care about her. They were her family by blood, after all. Disappointment had worn that hope away until she stopped expecting anything from them. Her decision to keep her distance in this life had contained a certain amount of resentment, too.

She had helped them after the bankruptcy, only to wake up one morning back in the days when they barely noticed her. She hadn't wanted to bother with them again.

Who would have thought Julian and Adrian would suddenly see Vivian for what she was and start caring about her instead?

Still, being loved by her brothers felt good.

Elise couldn't stop the corners of her mouth from lifting.

Julian walked her to her room and set the hot bowl on the table. His eyes caught on the stack of practice papers spread across her desk.

She had been working through them over the past few days. He picked up the top sheet. It was finished, with answers marked in red, check marks beside the correct ones and crosses beside the mistakes. At the end, she had calculated a score.

She had even graded her own work.

His expression softened as he turned through the stack, one sheet at a time. Before long, though, something began to puzzle him.

These papers covered junior-year material. Her junior year hadn't even begun. Why was she already doing the exercises?

And the scores were remarkably high. On some, she had lost only five or six points. Several were perfect.

At the bottom of the stack sat the neatly arranged answer keys.

Julian knew how his sister usually did at school. Her grades had always been somewhere in the middle.

He raised his eyebrows. Had she copied from the answers, then marked her own papers? Was this her way of building up her confidence about her grades?

He couldn't help smiling. Elise was busy settling her noodles on the table, entirely unaware of what he was thinking.

His little sister was adorable.

She noticed him looking at her. “What is it?”

“Nothing.” He shook his head.

He would keep his theory to himself. Struggling at school was hardly something to feel good about. If he said anything, he might crush the confidence she was trying to find.

Elise sat on the sofa and ate her noodles in small mouthfuls. Julian showed no sign of leaving. Having him stay made her a little self-conscious, but she couldn't very well ask him to go.

He looked around the room. Vivian's was far more luxurious, with thick, soft carpeting and even a crystal chandelier. By comparison, this one was almost plain. He made a mental note to have Daniel put that right another day.

Then his gaze passed over a cabinet. Bank cards and cash lay scattered across it, bills mixed with coins. She clearly hadn't had time to put them away.

“Were you counting your money?”

Elise had forgotten all about leaving the cards and loose change out. Heat rose in her face, as though he had caught her hiding something.

“Yes.”

Julian frowned. “Are you short of money?”

“Well... no.”

Having him discover it like this was mortifying.

Her evasive answer told him enough. He felt helpless sometimes: whatever she needed, she never wanted to tell him.

“Come to my study when you've finished eating,” he said with a sigh.

“You don't have to, Julian!”

Was he going to give her money? She needed it to rent a better place for her adoptive parents. They had nothing to do with him. How could she take his money for that?

He understood her expression. She was embarrassed to ask him for help.

Her adoptive parents had looked after him in his previous life, and he had never forgotten what he owed them. Since the doxxing, he had also been keeping an eye on how they were doing. He knew their rented home was due to be demolished for redevelopment.

Elise was short of money. It was plainly something to do with her parents. Once he connected that with the news about their home, the rest was easy to work out.

“You've got the wrong idea,” he said gently. “Come down later. You'll see.”

After eating, Elise went downstairs, still uncertain what to expect. Julian had left both his bedroom door and his study door open, knowing she would be frightened on the stairs. Warm light shone through the doorways and made the walk easier.

When she entered the study, he was still busy at the laptop on his desk.

“Have a seat first,” he said softly.

“Okay.”

She sat on the sofa as he asked, wondering what on earth he had planned.

He was wearing pajamas and thin, silver-framed glasses that gave him a scholarly air. Rising from the desk, he crossed to the bookshelves and opened a cabinet. It was packed with document envelopes. He selected one, opened the pale yellow paper flap, and drew out a sheaf of white pages.

He handed it to her.

Elise lifted the transparent cover and went still.

Inheritance Distribution Agreement.

“You probably don't know about this,” Julian began. “When Mom and Dad died, they left a large estate to be divided equally among the five of us. You still hadn't been found, so your share was set aside.”

Elise struggled to take that in. An inheritance. From her parents. For her?

Nothing like this had happened in her previous life.

“There was a condition. You weren't to receive it until you came of age. When they made those arrangements, they didn't know where you were or what kind of home you were growing up in. They were afraid that if you suddenly came into a fortune while you were still a child, you might never finish your education or learn how to support yourself.”

She felt lost, but she understood their concern almost immediately. They hadn't known who had adopted her, or what sort of family she was living with. Giving her a fortune before she was grown would have been a risk.

“Then why are you giving it to me now?”

Julian reached over and brushed a hand over her hair. His eyes were gentle.

“I've been working on the arrangements. I managed to have part of it released so you could receive it now.”

He had been working on this since his return to this life. It was part of his preparations for the coming financial crisis, and he wanted Elise to have substantial assets of her own as soon as possible.

He had neglected her before and made her suffer for it. He wanted to make up for that, to give her jewelry and buy her a car. But money she could use herself was more practical than any of those things.

With it, she could do whatever she wanted. She wouldn't have to worry about being unable to afford something she needed.

He wanted the rest of her life to be free of those worries.

Elise slowly ran her hand over the cover of the agreement.

“Aren't you worried I'll waste it?” she asked seriously. “Or go off the rails once I have all that money?”

Julian found that rather funny. He pushed his glasses up his nose.

“No.”

She had been so careful with money in their previous life. After he went bankrupt, she had helped him get back on his feet. To him, there couldn't be a kinder sister.

And even if she did go off the rails, he would be there to catch her.

Elise's thoughts were a jumble. This was the first thing since her return that had gone completely beyond anything she had expected. In her previous life, she hadn't heard a word about an inheritance.

She hadn't heard that Vivian had received one, either.

After a moment, she couldn't help asking, “What about Vivian?”

At the mention of her name, Julian's eyes visibly cooled.

“Mom and Dad left this to their five biological children. Vivian wasn't named as a beneficiary. She has no share in this inheritance.”

Elise nodded slowly. However much her parents and brothers had doted on Vivian in her previous life, her parents hadn't left this money to her.

They had kept it for the daughter they had lost.

She had resented them before. Why did they love the daughter they had adopted so much, while she was left on the outside?

Only now did she understand that they had been thinking of her all along.

Her fingers pressed into the white paper as she stroked the cover. She couldn't have put a name to the feeling in her chest. She was touched, and it hurt.

“There were still restrictions,” Julian said with a sigh. “After everything I tried, I could only get ten percent of your original inheritance released. I've converted that into a combination of cash and real estate. The rest will have to wait until you come of age.”

He sounded disappointed, almost apologetic.

Elise shook her head quickly. Without his help, she couldn't have received any of it early.

And she needed money now. With this, she could give her adoptive parents somewhere decent to live.

She disliked wasting money on designer clothes and expensive jewelry. That didn't mean she refused to spend it where it mattered. When her parents were being harassed, she hadn't hesitated to use her savings to hire a lawyer.

“That's all right, Julian,” she said sincerely. “This is more than enough.”

He lowered his eyes. Even with her reassurance, he couldn't quite shake the guilt.

He had run Whitmore Group for years and expanded its businesses by twenty-five percent. Yet here he was, defeated by the arrangements for his own sister's inheritance. All that effort, and he had managed to obtain only ten percent.

He sighed.

“Turn to the last page and check the amount. Then you just need to sign.”

“Okay.” Elise began turning the pages.