Yeah, Liam didn’t understand that. He wasn’t going to try something nasty because a woman asked him to. “Simon doesn’t have a criminal record?”
“None. But I wouldn’t necessarily hold a lot of faith in that,” Jake replied. “His father is titled. That still means something around here, and it certainly means something in the small town Simon grew up in. It would be easy to cover up youthful indiscretions.”
“But not major problems,” Alex said. “The tabloids around here love a good ‘royal screws up’ story. Seriously, we think we have intrusive reporters in the States? They have nothing on the Brits. I found three stories about the Weston family in recent tabloids. Two were concerning the marriage of his older brother, the heir to the title, and one about his mother’s new recipe book. The family seems clean.”
“Okay, so let’s ask some questions of our British friends, starting with Damon.” Liam glanced at Ian. “Will he have a problem putting some feelers out about this guy?”
“Damon was excited when I asked him to help us,” Ian said, settling back in his chair. “Apparently he’s finding club business isn’t as thrilling as getting his ass shot at. He’ll be fine asking around.”
“All right then, let’s move on to the reason for this meeting. Adam?” Liam waited as Adam clicked the remote, and Avery Charles’s face filled the screen. He studied her for a moment. It was a shot he’d taken himself while following her in St. James’s Park. She was smiling slightly, a mysterious look. A little Mona Lisa smile. Her dark hair hung to her shoulders in a cascading wave. Fuck. What was he thinking? Cascading wave? Her hair was brown, and she was mildly attractive in a bland sort of way. She was a little chunky. Her boobs were probably C cups, and they were natural because they sagged a little.
“Pretty girl.” Alex was staring at the screen, obviously contemplating Avery. Yeah, Liam didn’t like that.
“She’s also been through a lot,” Eve murmured, carefully avoiding looking at her ex-husband. She glanced down at her notes. “Avery Charles was born Avery Adamson and came from a fairly wealthy family. She was the only child. Her parents died in a plane crash. She was sent to live with her aunt who went through most of Avery’s trust fund.”
“Cinderella.” Adam sighed. “Sorry, I was telling Serena about her, and she said Avery reminded her of Cinderella.”
Ian reached over and slapped Adam upside the head. It was one of his patented moves. “Don’t talk about the case with your wife, asshole. Do you understand the word ‘confidential’?”
“Ow, one of these days, Ian.” Adam rubbed his head. “And I know, but all this information was public. It didn’t seem wrong to talk to her.”
And Liam had discovered that Serena could be very observant. “What did she think?”
Adam looked Liam’s way. “She guessed that any relative who would use her ward’s college money to buy designer clothes for her own daughter probably wasn’t very nice to Avery. Avery got married very young. Barely eighteen. She was trying to escape.”
“Her husband was a kid from her high school. Brandon Charles,” Eve continued.
“How was her trust set up?” Ian asked.
Eve passed Ian a copy of the file. “It came to Avery at the age of twenty-five or if she got married. Otherwise her aunt had full control and use of the fund to raise Avery.”
So she hadn’t married for love. She’d married to get her trust fund. Calculating. Liam would do well to remember that. “So she marries on her eighteenth birthday. I wonder if she made a deal with this Brandon kid.”
“If she did then it involved consummation of the marriage. She had Madison Rachelle Charles eight months after they’d eloped. At that point there was roughly one million dollars left in a trust fund that should have been in the fifteen million range.” Eve shook her head. “I would have tried to save it, too. I would have found the first guy willing to marry me and run with it. The trust wasn’t very well set up, but then Avery’s aunt was a lawyer. She knew how to work the system.”
“So the aunt sets up the trust fund in a way that she gets to use it free and clear?” That didn’t sound particularly fair. “Why would her parents do that?”
“Her father was the last of an old-money line. He preferred his charity work over everything else. By the time the money came to him, the industry that had created the money was gone. He wasn’t a particularly good caretaker. He spent millions on various charity projects,” Alex explained. “And when it came to lawyers, he likely figured his sister-in-law was family and wouldn’t harm him. As far as I can tell, this whole group is very na?ve.”