The Billionaire's accomplice

Tangled...

KELSEY

The Loft @The Ranch

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"What? No, it's not possible, it can't be!"

The shock was so sudden that i could not get a grip of myself. I could not believe what i just heard from Jacob. I forced the words to escape from my mouth in protest and total disbelief.

"I'm afraid, this is what Jeremy left in his will."

Jacob cleared his throat, he was wearing a white shirt and a black jacket, his good looking face  radiating a serious and calm demeanor. He was sitting on the other side of the long mahogany  table in front of me while shuffling the documents with both hands. That moment, Jacob was a reputed lawyer and an  Executive member of Montelibano group doing his job and not as Jeremy and Gabriel's  best buddy and adopted brother.

I swallowed hard and tried to absorb Jacob's statement in my mind. It did not make sense to me, but it was actually happening.

We were at the loft, the same place where I  impulsively signed the contract with Gabriel as an 'accessory' to his plan to stay with Jeremy.  The word left a bitter taste in my mouth, though our intentions were pure, Jeremy had died without knowing that we have 'deceived' him in a way that was not actually  of any harm to him. But just the same, a deception is still  a deception, and there could be no any single way to  refute it somehow,  just to make the act and intention justifiable.

Time flew by  like it was just yesterday.  Jeremy was gone, and our contract had ended,  but again, I was about to face  an almost the same predicament. Though this time, Gabriel did not draw the contract himself, but Jeremy did, in his last will. It stipulated a clause that could pin me down and get tangled up again and even more with his brother.  Putting me as a beneficiary in his will was already a big shock to me, it was totally unexpected and unnecessary, and never in my wildest dreams would I think that Jeremy would thought of me  highly in that way. 

I  observed Jacob from the short distance that separated us, and for a while, I envied his palpable calmness. If it was  like a potion that  I could take for myself that would put my mind at ease even a little bit, I would  surely have taken it  without thinking twice.

Jacob reached out and took a folder with the company's logo from a pile of folders and documents that was about four inches in height on top of the table beside him, and started to  leaf the pages and scan  it with his eyes,  he removed a gold colored  paper clip and detached a page and transferred it into another folder.  A Chopard silver-tone metal fountain pen, an opened laptop, a cellphone and a black notebook were neatly  placed side by side in front of him, as if it had to follow a certain chronological order.

"I'm sorry, but I can't accept it." I uttered in a whisper, recovering from a state of trance.

I blinked, hoping that everything would just vanished when I open my eyes. While still  barely recovering from another shocking revelation, without much thought, I suddenly told him with a tone of finality.

"Why?" Jacob's eyes darted at me in total surprise from the rim of the documents he was reading  partially covering his face. He laid down the documents on the table, folded his arms on his chest and looked at me intently while he waited for an answer.

I took a deep breath, trying to clear my mind before I say anything. The shock was distractedly overwhelming.

"I should be honest with you, there are actually many reasons why. Firstly, I  really don't think I deserve any of it."  I shook my head while saying that.