Page 133 of Reverie

She gapes at me, her eyes wide. “What?”

I pull out another folder. “This one explains August’s guardianship. When I’m gone, I want to make sure that you’re his guardian and that you have control of his inheritance until he reaches the ages outlined in my will here.” I pass her the bound document with my will and information on August’s trust.

“H,” Leo says, his voice rough.

I lift the bag, open it, and pull out stacks of cash and documents.

“Here are the passports I got for you. There’s one for August too. There’s sixty grand here in cash, but here are the account numbers for other places to get more money. There’s roughly four hundred and eight million in liquid cash. The rest are in investments and real estate. We have a lot in Bitcoin and a few other cryptos. I recommend holding those, though.”

I don’t know what will happen to those if and when the Feds decide to put their hooks into me. I want to make sure they’re all taken care of.

“Hunter—” Winter begins.

“Go here,” I point to an address in rural upstate New York. “You can hide for a while. At least until things die down. Then I want you to go overseas with August. Start over. Make up with Veronica and stay close to her. Keep yourself safe and lie low.”

“Hunter!” Winter’s voice pierces through my tirade like a thunderclap, and I pause with my hands splayed on top of the woodgrain desk, over the reams of paper.

I breathe in, but it’s hard to gather air.

“Hunter, what is this?”

I can’t answer her. It’s too hard to say the words: I’m preparing you to live without me.

“I want to make sure you’re taken care of, baby.”

She starts to shake. “Why? It’s going to be all right. Misha said?—”

“I know what Misha said, Sunbeam. But the reality is….”

The reality is these people can do whatever the fuck they want, and I want to make sure that Winter and August are as far away from here as possible.

Safe.

Her eyes widen even more. “Hunter, you will get past this. They have nothing tying you?—”

“Sunbeam, you know as well as I do that if they wanted to connect me to all of this, they can. Just do this. Please. For me.”

Leo lets out a deep breath, but I can’t break my eyes from Winter’s.

“No,” she says, her voice firm.

“No?” I straighten, looking down at her.

“You heard me right, Hunter. I’m not signing all of this. I’m not going to New York or wherever the hell you want me to go, and you’re not going down for this. I won’t let it happen.”

My eyes slide closed, and I focus very hard on staying in control.

“Winter, please,” I say. When I feel her shift to stand and Kitty moves around my ankles, I give her my attention.

The smile she wears is tight. “We’ll be right back,” she says.

Leo nods at Winter from his position leaning against Luna’s desk, tapping his finger on the lip of the top.

Winter grabs my wrist, not unlike how I had grabbed hers, and she leads us back through the house. When we reach our room, she says, “Kitty, find August.”

Kitty tilts his head and then moves off in the direction of August’s game room with a huff and an eye roll.

Winter shuts the door behind us.