Read The Testament for Free Online Page A

microphones scattered about. They were from large newspapers and well-known financial publications.
    The questions began. Yes, there was a last-minute will, but he could not reveal its contents. Yes, there’d been an autopsy, but he couldn’t discuss it. The company would continue operating with no changes. He couldn’t talk about who the new owners would be.
    To no one’s surprise, it became obvious that the families had spent the day chatting privately with reporters.
    “There’s a strong rumor that Mr. Phelan’s last will divides his fortune among his six children. Can you confirm or deny this?”
    “I cannot. It’s just a rumor.”
    “Wasn’t he dying of cancer?”
    “That would go to the autopsy, and I can’t comment on that.”
    “We’ve heard that a panel of psychiatrists examined him shortly before his death, and pronounced him mentally sound. Can you confirm this?”
    “Yes,” Stafford said, “this is true.” So they spent the next twenty minutes picking and prying into the mental exam. Josh held his ground, allowing only that Mr. Phelan “appeared” to be of sound mind.
    The financial reporters wanted numbers. Because The Phelan Group was a private company, very tightly held, information had always been hard to come by. This was an opportunity to crack the door, or so they thought. But Josh gave them little.
    He excused himself after an hour, and returned to his office, where a secretary informed him that the crematorium had called. Mr. Phelan’s remains were ready to be picked up.

FIVE
_____________
    TJ nursed his hangover until noon, then drank a beer and decided it was time to flex his muscle. He called his principal lawyer to check on the current state of things, and the lawyer cautioned him to be patient. “This will take a little time, TJ,” the lawyer said.
    “Maybe I’m not in the mood to wait,” TJ shot back, his head splitting.
    “Give it a few days.”
    TJ slammed the phone down and walked to the rear of his dirty condo, where, thankfully, he couldn’t find his wife. They had been through three fights already, and it was barely noon. Perhaps she was out shopping, spending a fraction of his new fortune. The shopping didn’t bother him now.
    “The old goat’s dead,” he said out loud. There was no one else around.
    His two children were away at college, their tuition paid for by Lillian, who still had some of the money she’d taken fromTroy in the divorce decades earlier. So TJ lived alone with Biff, a thirty-year-old divorcée whose two kids lived with their father. Biff had a real estate license and sold darling little starters to newlyweds.
    He opened another beer and stared at himself in a full-length mirror in the hall. “Troy Phelan, Jr.,” he proclaimed. “Son of Troy Phelan, tenth richest man in America, net worth of eleven billion, now deceased, survived by his loving wives and loving children, all of whom will love him even more after probate. Yes!”
    He decided right then and there that from that day forward, TJ would be ditched and he would go through life as Troy Phelan, Jr. The name was magic.
    The condo had a certain smell to it because Biff refused to do housework. She was too busy with her cell phones. The floors were covered with debris but the walls were bare. The furniture was rented from a company that had hired lawyers to recover everything. He kicked a sofa, and yelled, “Come get this crap! I’ll be hiring designers before long.”
    He could almost torch the place. Another beer or two, and he might start playing with matches.
    He dressed in his best suit, a gray one he’d worn yesterday when Dear Old Dad faced the psychiatrists and performed so wonderfully. Since there would be no funeral, he wouldn’t be forced to rush out and buy a new black one. “Armani, here I come,” he whistled joyfully as he zipped up his pants.
    At least he had a BMW. He might live in a dump, but the world would never see it. The world, however, noticed his car,