peridot | lando norris

41|new york|

lando pov.

"so,what you're saying is that maeve could own a bunch of you guys' childhood favourite homes and turn them all into some sort of fancy airbnb's without your parents meddling if you, gave up niamh's custody to me completely" i say, looking between ronan and maeve.

bullshit.

we'd been in new york for a day, and were sitting in ronan's office. leigh had taken arlo and niamh to a new york knicks game while we got some of the serious work done.

december had been nothing less of a dream, everything seemed to have slowly come back together, and now it was time to make sure it lasted.

"that's one part of it, yes in simple words. but, the real reason why they wanted to put it up like this is because our grandparents did not put their kids in the will." this was more than amusing actually.

ronan went on and i listened intently.

"well quite honestly, nobody expects you to give up the custody anyways"he looked at maeve for a moment before turning to me.

"lando, what i mean is that they used it as a leverage to make sure that maeve keeps the property, or as i like to say- the money in the family by giving them the rights to it. it's not that deep, this is something they'd assumed they would have if you still wore the name clarke as proudly." i looked at maeve to see her expression blank, emotionless.

she'd heard this, lived it for a while. it was news to me, having learned about everything in the past weeks and somehow hearing it each time felt more bizarre than before.

"alright, so long story short- they just want maeve back in the family business... and they'd rather do it with paper conflicts than actually just talk. is this all what that big decision is about?"

toss lando out with niamh and take over 'something' that is meant to be maeve's, or, keep us- who are already hers- by giving away 'something' that's still meant to be hers?

"yeah, pretty much. and keeping that mind, how was ashton in the picture anyways because i still cannot wrap my head around it" maeve spoke up, tapping on the glass table top of ronan's desk.

ronan pursed his lips and looked at me. i furrowed my brows, shifting in my chair to sit up straighter. "stop looking at me like that ron," i said and he chuckled.

"ashton, uh from what i understand it was so kind of to make sure that you had a clean public slate to start off with, firstly. a good business image and just to lock in" he shrugged it off and i looked at maeve, hoping she'd explain what her brother meant.

she just chewed on her bottom lip, looking out the massive glass windows of ronan's office that overlooked the skyline of the city.

"a partnership contract, one was to make sure they didn't loose all of the share holding that they gave away since they knew ashton would stay. that's the one that i put for niamh but it's under my name. and also so that i couldn't divorce ashton even if we ever wanted to because it wouldn't leave me with anything. we have until niamh's 18 to think of what to do with it. ronan and maire cannot have it because it's equally spread between all of us"

a web of complications. that's all that i was able to get out it all. i let out a dry chuckle and sat back in my chair. "why do they want to go through such elaborate games and trouble, is business not that good that they need other ways to entertain themselves?" i asked ronan with a scoff and maeve let out small laugh at that.

ronan looked like he wanted to laugh to but held compuser and took a sip of water. "well, it's the most profit we've done in awhile. you know with entire economies having downfalls, laywers are everywhere. the point is, we never wanted maeve to leave, they just never expected she'd take the option that was clearly supposed to be the bad one." well, she did date sorbet dude for a few years, maybe bad choices were her deal