Godmother To His Son Then I Took His Kingdom Chapter 21
Back in my office, I had my lawyer send over the complete guardianship file.
The first page still held the familiar words.
If anything happened to Evelyn, Leo was to be placed in my care.
At his birthday party more than a year ago, she had handed it to me in front of everyone, a Trojan horse designed to let me discover the birth certificate hidden inside.
Now she was in prison, Graham was dead, and the Cabot family was pushing the same file back in front of me, expecting me to clean up their final mess.
My lawyer’s voice was firm on the phone. “That designation is not legally binding. You are under no obligation to accept. Leo has other living biological relatives. The Cabots can’t just dump him on you.”
“Why are they giving him up now?”
“After the scandal, reporters started following him everywhere. The Cabots believe his presence is a constant reminder of what Evelyn did.”
My hand tightened around the mouse.
To people like them, a child had never been a person.
He was Evelyn’s bargaining chip in her war for Graham. He was the fake heir the Whitmores used to maintain appearances. Now that the lie was exposed, he was just a piece of evidence they wanted to discard.
“Mrs. Whitmore has also filed an opinion with the court,” my lawyer continued. “She’s arguing that because Graham raised Leo for eight years, Leo should have a claim on his estate. She’s petitioning to have the distributions to your foundation stayed.”
I laughed, a short, bitter sound.
While Graham was alive, she’d acted as if everything I had came from the Whitmores.
Now that he was dead, she wanted to use a child with no blood tie to them—a child they had already abandoned—to claw money back from the hands of crime victims.
“The foundation funds have already been transferred, correct?”
“Yes. The will has passed probate. Every step was legal.”
“Then let the court know we will not be halting distributions.”
“And Leo?”
On my screen, the guardianship file remained open to the birth certificate.
I was silent for a long time.
“Tell the court I’ll come back to Boston.”
My lawyer sounded surprised. “You’re considering accepting guardianship?”
“No.”
I closed the laptop.
“I’m going back because this time, no one gets to use him as a tool ever again.”