The Canary's Empire

They lined up to watch me get tossed out on the street. One car crash had put my billionaire boyfriend in the ICU.

Deep coma, no word on whether he'd wake up, and everyone assumed the rich man's little pet had just lost her meal ticket. I played his kept woman for five years.

Here's what they didn't know. I own twenty percent of his company. Quietly, on paper, under a name not one of them ever tied to me.

His will leaves every last dollar to a single person. Me. And an ocean away, there's a whole family empire waiting on its only heir to come home and run it.

What they really didn't see coming: I never showed up to play the grieving widow. I smiled, put on my shareholder hat, and walked straight into his company.

Later, after they dragged him back from the edge and told him every last thing I'd done those two months, he just sighed. "...The hell did you all go and provoke her for?" Chapter 1 The call came while the manicurist was curing my last nail: Julian was in surgery, and no one could say if he'd live.

Pink diamond, still tacky under the lamp. I didn't even get to admire my own hand. I stared at that notyetdry hand and went very calm. They'd think the canary had lost her perch.

None of them knew the thing worth grabbing had been mine from the start. I was his one known woman. To the world outside, I was the girl Julian Sinclair paid to keep pretty.

His kept bird. Perch gone, the cage should swing right open. That was how they saw it. Too bad they didn't know. The key to that cage had sat in my own hand the whole time.

I got to the hospital as fast as a car could take me. He was still in surgery. That was when I found out there'd been a woman in the crash with him. She was in the OR too. Young.

A few years younger than me, and I was only a couple shy of thirty. Shareholders and Sinclair relatives packed the waiting room. I caught every flavor of look on their faces.

I waited hours outside those doors for an answer. Julian was stable, but not out of danger. Comatose. When he'd wake, or whether he'd wake at all, the doctors wouldn't promise.

The cause was still under investigation. The other car had hit him headon. That driver died on the scene. One accident, and his whole board came apart at the seams.

As his socalled kept woman, I ran around handling things beside his assistant. The pet fetched, and the pet paid the bills. Not one of them wondered why.

The other injured passenger was in better shape. The doctors said she'd probably come around within seven days. "Derek," I asked, "what's that girl to Mr.

Sinclair?" Sure enough, his face went tight. "Serena, I'll be straight with you. I don't know either. All I know is Mr. Sinclair met this Sutton woman a few times.

What they actually were to each other, I honestly can't say." Whatever that girl was to him, he'd walled it off well enough that his own assistant couldn't see over.

I'd known Julian a decade. Been with him five years. This was the first time I'd turned up one of his little secrets. I didn't have room to dwell on it.

Day two of Julian in the ICU, his uncle and aunt came back. "My nephew won't be needing your care, Serena." Gerald. Julian's uncle by blood.

First time he didn't bother putting on a smile for me. The moment his nephew hit that ICU bed, the thin coat of politeness on his face went dark.

His wife Vivienne put it plainer. "Let's be honest, Serena. You and our Julian never married. And he crashed with another woman in his car. No telling how this shakes out.

You'd be smart to start worrying about yourself." The message wasn't subtle. I was just a woman Julian was about to discard.

Even with him lying there unconscious, I had no standing to sit at his side like family.

If memory served, back when Julian was up and walking, these two kept their tails firmly tucked. The Sinclairs had gone bankrupt once, years back.

Julian built the whole thing up from nothing after, no help from this pair. But some scrap of family feeling had him hand their son a job once the kid graduated.

Before, they only sneered when they saw me. Figured I was some nobody not fit for the room. Now that Julian was down, they stopped hiding the ugliness.

Before I could get a word out, Vivienne added, "And that mansion you're living in. Julian bought it, didn't he?

In his condition, well, no offense, but if he never wakes up, Sinclair property can't just stay under you forever." "Find a time and move out of it." She lifted her chin, waiting to watch the perchless canary bow her head.

She had no idea. The deed to that mansion carried exactly one name. Mine. Chapter 2 I smiled. Every one of Julian's direct relatives was already gone.

The closest blood he had left was Gerald. If Julian died, the lawful heir to all of it would be this uncle. No one else. I glanced at Derek.

He caught the cue and slid the printout across to Gerald. "What is this..." Gerald muttered, squinting down at it. "That's Julian's hospital bill for the last two days," I said. "Toptier equipment, most expensive the floor has.

Best drugs on the market. The number it burns through in a single day, you can count it yourselves." I let it sit a beat. "You two want to take care of him?

Starting today, the bill's yours." The machines and the drugs keeping Julian alive were the best money could buy. Not a small number. Gerald's knuckles went white on the paper.

Vivienne's smile froze on half her face. "And since you'll be handling his care," I went on, "kindly pay me back what I fronted yesterday. Nothing huge.

A little over two hundred grand. I've got the receipts. How would you like to settle up?" They stood there stunned.

I took my slow, easy time with the last line. "Oh, and that mansion you told me to move out of. Julian bought it, true. But the deed lists one name. Written out nice and clear.

Mine. "So. You want to throw me out?" Dream on. The second the Sinclairs heard Julian had bought me that mansion, their faces went a shade of black I don't have words for.

Neither of them had ever rated that kind of treatment in their lives. They stared at the bill a long moment, then dragged their eyes up to glare at me.

Couldn't stand to part with the money. That was the whole of it. The way Julian was now, every day meant cash torched just to keep him breathing.

Hundreds of thousands a month, gone. He'd be a bottomless pit. The doctors said there was better equipment at a specialist center. I'd already put in for it.

They flinched at a few hundred thousand.

If they knew it would climb into the millions, it might just finish them. "You live with him," Vivienne said, the gears turning. "You don't know his passwords?

Just use his money to pay for it." I looked up at the ceiling and rolled my eyes, elegantly. "Sorry. I don't know his passwords." A lie.

I knew the passwords to accounts he hadn't logged into in years. They looked ready to blow up right there in the hospital. I got ahead of them.

Lifted my voice on purpose, loud enough for the doctors and nurses and patients drifting past to catch every syllable. "You're both in such a rush to get rid of me.

Won't cover a dollar of his bills, either. Almost like you don't want him saved at all.

Like you're just waiting for him to die so you can inherit your own nephew's estate." We were in a hallway. I'd turned the volume up, and it worked.

Every doctor, nurse, and patient nearby swung our way. Everybody's got a taste for gossip.

Heads poked over in a heartbeat. "Serena, what garbage are you spouting!" Gerald lost it, his face flushing red. I wasn't scared in the least.

Louder was better. "Then why are you trying to run me off? You won't even pay his bills. The minute I'm gone you'll pull the plug and walk off with your nephew's fortune, won't you?

Do you two sleep at night? He's this young, and here you are hoping he dies?" Yesterday's rescue had been a whole production. Half the hospital knew a rich man had been admitted.

Now they caught this juicy little scene, and the gasp that went up beat anything on prime time. Hospitals never run short on mouths that love to talk.

The whispering had already started. Guilty hearts spook fastest when someone says the quiet part out loud. Gerald and Vivienne saw which way it was tipping.

Vivienne flung the bill down onto the floor. "We'll see how long you keep strutting around." Then they turned and walked off. Fled, more like.

Chapter 3 I bent down, picked the bill up off the floor, and turned to Derek. "Get a few bodyguards to take shifts outside his room.

Don't let that family near him." Julian lay unconscious in his hospital bed. Outside those walls, the world had gone to hell. First the crash hit the trending page.

Then the shareholders started tearing each other apart, meeting after meeting. The funniest part: Gerald's son, Trent.

A rankandfile nobody, and within days of Julian's crash he'd "moved up" into management.

Julian was still in the ICU with a tube down his throat, alive or dead a coin toss, and already someone was scrambling to climb into his chair. Some people were in a real hurry.

How was that family ever going to let a fortune this easy slip through their fingers? Julian's condition stayed grim.

I kept watch at the hospital for days, until he steadied enough for me to breathe. Day three since the crash. Four more, and the woman from his car would be awake enough to talk.

For years I'd had people fawning over me, all of it borrowed against Julian's name. He went down, and that meant my perch went down with him.

The ones playing concerned were probably just fishing for information. Early on, plenty came by his room. By now the traffic had thinned to almost nothing.

There were even messages sitting in my phone. A few men who'd heard Julian was down, sliding in to ask whether I might "consider" them.

Back when Julian was awake, these same faces bowed and scraped every time they saw me. In their eyes, a woman who'd belonged to one man went on clearance the second he fell.

Marked down, up for grabs, anybody welcome to take a number. I looked down at the man on the bed, tubes and all. Even wrecked like this, you could see how goodlooking he was.

For his age, what he'd built turned heads. The doctors put his odds of waking low. He might stay under for weeks. Months. A year.

Maybe he never surfaced at all, and keeping him alive would be a bottomless pit.

Gerald and the rest did come back, only to run into the bodyguards outside the room and not get within a step of Julian.

They hollered that I had no right to strip their visiting rights. I didn't listen to the barking. The hospital knew exactly who was footing the bills.

Nobody wants to referee a family feud. Figuring Julian's odds were shot, the family stopped sniffing around the last couple days.

Only a handful of shareholders came, Julian's own people, to talk over where the company stood with Derek.

You can imagine how much was sitting there, waiting to be carved up the moment Julian dropped. I listened a while, off to the side.

Then, out of nowhere, "Maybe I'll go take a look at the company myself." I wasn't joking.

When I walked into Julian's company, though, the looks thrown my way ran about the same as at the hospital. Only now there was more contempt in them.

More sneer. "Derek, what are you doing bringing an outsider into the building?" someone spoke up at once. "This is a shareholders' meeting, not Mr. Sinclair's office.

You brought her here to stir up trouble?" My eyes went to the man who'd spoken. Vaughn, I was fairly sure. Around five percent of the shares.

The real joke of it: Gerald sat at the head of the table, his son at his right hand. Two people without a single share between them, playing the leads.

In the span of a few days, the suits on that father and son had gotten visibly nicer. A whole room of them, sitting there waiting to watch the canary come crying, come begging.

I let my gaze cross the floor. Crossed the pair at the head of the table, the two who didn't own one share and had somehow come into new suits.

Then I spoke. "This is a shareholders' meeting, isn't it? "I'm here to take part.

Is that a problem?" Chapter 4 Before anyone else could get a word out, Trent broke first. "Serena, in what capacity are you attending a shareholders' meeting?" His challenge struck me as genuinely funny. "Trent.

And in what capacity are you and your father attending a shareholders' meeting?" Yes, Julian built this company.

No, it had nothing to do with the Sinclairs who'd gone bankrupt all those years ago. Word was Trent had even been speeddating a few heiresses these past days.

Why those families were suddenly courting him, angling to marry in, the reason was simple.

Me showing up here, they'd instantly decided I'd come to fight for Julian's assets. "My dad is Julian's own uncle. Julian's lying there unconscious.

Someone has to run company business for him. What's wrong with us standing in?" On principle, sure, it tracked.

I let out a soft laugh. "Then as a shareholder, what's wrong with me attending a shareholders' meeting?" "You? A shareholder?" Now it was their turn to laugh out loud.

Derek stepped up behind me and set a document on the table for them to pass around. "My proof of ownership. Take a look." Not a ripple in my voice. The hands passing it stopped.

Someone read the ownership stake over and over, like they couldn't believe a woman Julian kept around held a piece of his company this big. And not a small piece. Twenty percent.

A full fifth. That's no kept woman's meal ticket.

That's enough leverage to flip the table. "Ashford?" Trent's eyes snagged on the name, and something in his face cracked. "You go by Serena.

Who's Ashford to you?" Most of them knew that name. Ashford had been one of the company's founding investors.

The silent partner who, for years, sent lawyers to stand in at every shareholders' meeting. The one nobody had ever seen in the flesh. I slapped my ID down on the conference table.

My photo, plain as day. My legal name printed right there. Serena Ashford. I gave them a puzzled look. "So I go by a first name day to day. That a crime