Cassie paused to smile reassuringly at the pair of them.
“This is what Justine’s hopefully going to do in a few minutes, John, because it makes the trust legally yours; in fact, once she signs the assignment, legally, it always was, at least since she came of age, it never became hers within the timeframe of her marriage, and Carlo can have no possible claim on it. The settlor of the trust, your mother, anticipated what could eventually come about, in fact she was counting on this happening, what we’re doing here and now, should the need arise; Jane confided in Jerome that Justine’s father knew what your mother and baby sister meant to you, and he always believed that, should anything happen to him, you would be there for them, and especially for Justine. This is why we had no hesitation in doing things this way, because we knew you’d see the right of it and go along with it for Justine’s sake.”
Cassie smiled reassuringly at Justine.
“Justine, there is one more thing; that terrible day your poor father passed away, Bruno made a clandestine visit to Antonio’s private office and removed a series of document wallets from his safe, which he gave to your mother; your father set great store by them, and Bruno didn’t want them falling into anyone else’s hands. Jane in turn gave them to Jerome to keep safe, and I’ve had them locked away ever since in a very safe place indeed. The contents were mostly shares bought many years ago in what Justine’s father considered interesting, potentially money-spinning small start-up ventures with strange names that tickled his fancy. Justine, you have several thousand shares each of ‘Google’, ‘Apple’, ‘Yahoo’, and ‘Skype’; I estimate the total value of your shares to be somewhere close to fifteen million dollars; along with the fifteen million dollars already realized and accrued from the sale of your father’s businesses and assets, your trust fund is worth today approximately thirty million dollars.”
Justine’s jaw dropped in shock, but Johnny still looked puzzled, and not at all convinced.
“I still don’ like this; how can I just scoop-up all her money without she gettin’ no say in it? ’tain’t right…”
Tommy grinned at Cassie and slipped his arm around Angie’s waist as she sat on his lap.
“Johnny, Cassie and Jerome saw what Carlo was, just like you did; they saw you were having enough problems accepting Justine’s marriage without burdening you with their suspicions, so they took steps to make sure she was protected. And we haven’t given anything to you yet; Justine still has to sign it all over to you, which is what this meeting is mostly about. One thing, though. You can’t give it all back to her, not until a year after the divorce is finalized, or Carlo will make some kind of claim on it. It may not be a good claim. Cassie knows that, but there’ll be enough smoke and mirrors to tie everything up again, and not in a good way.”
He grinned at Justine and squeezed Angel’s waist, making her giggle, before continuing.
“Johnny, you know by now that Cassie’s got a mind like a seven-sided Rubik’s cube; no matter how much you think you’re seeing, there’s always going to be something you can’t see, and won’t ever see; thinking like that lets her plan for contingencies I never would have thought of, and so she and Jerome just went off and got a little creative before Justine got married, just in case. As you know, the board of trustees needs a quorum of four to make executive decisions, so Kelly, Cassie, Jerome, and yours truly got together and made some plans, drew-up some paperwork we didn’t tell you about, signed it all off, and sat back to wait and see what happened, because we could all see Justine walking out on that feckless idiot. It was given to us to protect her from sharks and gold-diggers. We did it our way.”
Tommy leaned back in his chair, and settled Angie more comfortably on his lap.
“As soon as we heard that Justine had left Carlo, but before she filed for a divorce, we the trustees filed the paperwork that we’d all signed-off on, backdated to before Justine even got married; a very amenable judge in upstate New York with a deep dislike of the kind of money-grubbing bottom-feeder Carlo is had no issue with filing the paperwork and backdating it to one day after Justine’s eighteenth birthday once we clued him in, just so the paper-trail stops with you before Carlo ever got his mitts on her.”
Tommy glanced over at Cassie, who reached out and patted Johnny’s hand again, before taking up the story.
“John, everything now shows you’d always been the beneficiary of the trust, never a trustee, it has been yours since the day Justine signed it over to you; all we need is her signature on this piece of paper, and I guarantee one thing; no matter how hard he plots, plans, or schemes, Carlo will never see a penny of her money. Knowing the kind of idiot he is, he’ll never even suspect just what she has, but just in case he does some digging, he’s going to hit a wall we put up five years ago, a wall he’ll never get through.”
Cassie slid the paper across the table to Justine, who took it and looked helplessly at Johnny.
“Baby, if I sign this, then Carlo’s gone forever?”
Johnny nodded, and squeezed her hand reassuringly.
“Soon as we can get it fixed, Minou; this your decision, Baby-Girl, you want time to think some?”
Justine shook her head as she picked up the pen, a momentary sadness passing through her as she signed; no matter that no court had made any decision yet, this was really the final act in the end of her marriage. She felt guilty at the thought of leaving Carlo out so completely, but then the image of a bony fist crashing into her face once more reared up inside her, and she pushed the sadness and regret back down inside; Carlo had brought this on himself; now Johnny-Bear was who she had to worry about, not the lost and dead past, and he was more than enough.
Justine passed the document to Johnny, who quickly scanned through it, a standard assignment authorization, before handing it to Jerome, who grinned as he put it in his briefcase.
“John, now that we have that final assignment, if or when Carlo’s lawyer decides to do some investigating he’s going to find that, prior to her marriage, but still legally an adult, Justine signed-over all her father’s accrued assets to you, and came into the marriage some months later with just the money from your mom’s insurance, the apartment in Mineola, and nothing more. Checking to find out just what ‘assets’ she possessed on the day of the marriage, he’s going to find the deeds for the Mineola apartment, alas, now long sold and disposed of by Carlo, a few checking accounts with a couple of hundred dollars in each one, and a savings account with $2, 000 in it, and nothing else. Carlo and his lawyers are in for a thin time of it if they decide to play hardball, because he’s already had every last penny of Justine’s money; I almost feel sorry for him… almost.” From Tommy’s grin, it was clear that he didn’t feel any sorrow for Carlo at all.
Justine’s head was spinning as she tried to follow what these people, world-famous people, were doing to help Johnny help her; all she could understand was that suddenly she was rich, but then she wasn’t, but Johnny was, because she’d apparently just given all this mythical money to him (although the paperwork said she’d done it years earlier), which she didn’t understand, but had no problem with; he was her Johnny-Bear, she’d have given it all to him ten times over if he’d asked for it.
Justine got the sense that somehow, Johnny’s friends had made good and damn sure Carlo would get nothing more from her, and if he tried, he’d spend the rest of his life in a tail-chasing exercise these brilliant, devious, people had devised solely for his benefit.
“So Johnny, what do we do now? Those people in New York…” she began, but stopped when Robin cleared his throat.
“Justine, we couldn’t do much about those scum, so Jerome’s advice is still the best; take them down to the backwoods with you and let Johnny’s kin deal with them. I already took the liberty of talking with Johnny’s grandma, Miz Eulalie; she knows what’s going on, and she and some of Johnny’s family are preparing a little welcoming committee if or when those scum show up. Tommy and me, we’ll do what we can here, and Cassie’s got some friends with real weight in the Commission investigating organized crime in New York City, but for now you’ll be safe as you can be on Johnny’s home turf, so go there, keep ahead of those assholes, and let Johnny and his family take care of them.”
The meeting more or less broke up then in a sudden flurry of activity as everyone prepared to slip away as unobtrusively as possible; Justine had to grin when Kelly Delano, probably Hollywood’s most beautiful, most bankable property, showed up with no makeup, with dark rings under her eyes, cheap and clunky horn-rimmed glasses with lenses like bottle-bottoms, lank, straggly hair scraped back and held down with a cheap Alice band, ripped, faded jeans and stained old sneakers, and a patched and bobbled sweater; Justine would have walked straight past her on any sidewalk in New York without a second glance.
Angie and Cassie’s transformation was even more jaw-dropping; gone was the pair of svelte blondes, and in their place were two thick-waisted, shabbily-dressed middle-aged matrons, their immaculate blonde hair scraped back in untidy buns, and she could swear there was something different about their teeth; they looked like the kind of household drudges who spent their lives gossiping in Laundromats, not two of the most famously glamorous women in America.
Moon was dressed in the usual assortment of knock-off designer label clothing any typical fourteen year-old fashion victim would be expected to be seen in, complete with a Von Dutch ball-cap (examined closely, the logo would read ‘Von Butch’…), little white ear-bud headphones with white leads trailing to a battered cell with a cracked screen clutched in her hand, ragged fingernails bitten down to the quick, a nose ring, and replica ‘Police’ sunshades. She looked so typically teen and nondescript that one would be hard-put to describe her to another person, nor even remember her clearly, five minutes after seeing her. Jerome was also getting into the spirit of things, bundling himself into a stained trench-coat, with his briefcase stuffed in a ratty old backpack, and his immaculate hair mussed and lank where it could be seen under the sweat-stained fedora he wore.
There was no disguising Tommy and Robin, not with their size, so they just pulled on ball-caps and faded sweatshirts. Justine was puzzled by all the theatrics, something Tommy noticed, and grinned at her puzzlement.
“We don’t know who’s watching the house, Justine, and anyone who sees Angel Graves and Kelly Delano walking out of here with you in-tow is gonna start thinking things; if your friends have caught up with you, that’d tip them off who else is in this thing, hence the fancy dress.”
He grinned wolfishly.
“Just in case anyone who’s not supposed to be here did show up, well, we’ve got a little girl with a big old sniper rifle holed up somewhere round here with a bead drawn on this place; anyone we don’t know tries to make their way in, they’re gonna be wandering around looking for the rest of their head, ‘cos she shoots like Annie Oakley; the way she sees it, anyone stupid or suicidal enough to mess with her mom or her aunt Angie deserves what they get…”