Texas was a land of wide-open spaces and sparse population, steeped in a rich cowboy culture. The people here cherished their small towns, ranches, and free-spirited way of life above all else.
They hated being told what to do. It didn't matter if you were the Emperor of Mexico or the President of the United States—hell, even if aliens showed up, Texans would still be just as stubborn and rebellious.
Their fiercely independent spirit kept their cities relatively small. Too many people packed together led to trouble, and after the trouble was over, the population numbers naturally went back down.
California had Los Angeles and San Francisco. Washington had Seattle. New York spoke for itself. But what famous big cities did Texas have? Houston, the largest, barely scraped two million people. Most folks probably hadn't even heard of Dallas or El Paso.
Bella and her group were headed to Newton, a small town in southeast Texas, not far from the Louisiana border.
Having the boss drive while the employees cuddled in the backseat? Not happening! Once they left Dallas behind, Bella called Max up to the front to take the wheel.
"Boss? I... I don't..." He wanted to say he couldn't drive, but the words stuck in his throat. Americans who couldn't drive were genuinely rare.
Bella blinked in surprise.
"You really can't drive? Only ride a skateboard? ...No problem, this is a perfect learning opportunity! Come on, there's nobody on the road anyway. It's so simple—you'll get the hang of it in a couple of miles."
She practically shoved Max into the driver's seat.
Max gripped the steering wheel nervously, terrified he'd drive them into a ditch.
Bella, completely unconcerned, nestled comfortably against Heather's ample chest and drifted off to sleep.
The highway grew increasingly desolate. By the time they reached Newton that afternoon, the landscape had turned harsh and barren.
Towering trees lined both sides of the road. The town itself had few buildings, and the locals watched them with cold, unfriendly eyes. Gun regulations about public spaces didn't seem to exist here—people openly carried handguns on their hips or held shotguns in their hands.
To both assert dominance and give her two honest companions some courage, Bella raised her gun and shot dead a wolf that had wandered out looking for food.
"Your great-grandmother lived alone in a place like *this*? That's seriously hardcore!" Bella figured that without some kind of special ability, surviving to a natural death in this environment made Heather's grandmother one tough woman...
They stopped in front of a wall marked with the Sawyer family nameplate. A heavy iron gate blocked their path. After waiting a moment, the lawyer handling the estate drove up from the other direction.
The lawyer was an elderly man—fat, with white hair and a white beard, wheezing as he walked.
He looked the three of them over. His gaze swept across Bella and Max, apparently deciding they lacked that quintessential Texas spirit, before finally settling on Heather.
"You look just like your grandmother." The old man smiled warmly at Heather while pulling out a thick document envelope.
Heather wore a striped top with the shoulder deliberately torn to expose her left shoulder. The short shirt was pushed out by her natural assets, leaving her smooth midriff completely bare—an incredibly alluring sight. She nervously accepted the documents and began reading through them carefully.
"Verna Sawyer... that's your great-grandmother's name. She was a good woman, very kind, though not exactly popular around here." The old man pointed at the word 'Bitch' spray-painted on the wall.
Heather still used her adoptive parents' surname. She wasn't fond of the Sawyer name, but she didn't hate it either.
Changing surnames was complicated. Inheriting the estate of a great-grandmother she'd never met was even more complicated.
And these two things were interconnected—you couldn't have one without the other.
If she inherited the estate, she could legitimately change her surname. If she changed her surname, she could inherit the estate.
Which raised the question: what did she need to do to inherit the estate?
Money! She needed money! The estate was tied up in probate, buried under liens, back taxes, legal fees, and god knows what else.
The United States had federal estate taxes, but those only kicked in for estates worth over $13 million. Heather's problem wasn't the estate tax itself—it was everything else.
The property had debts. The county wanted back taxes. The probate court wanted fees. Creditors were circling. And without proper documentation proving her relationship to the deceased, the whole process would drag on forever, racking up more costs by the day.
For estates in legal limbo like this one, clearing all the obligations could easily eat up 40-50% of the property's value. Lawyers, court costs, outstanding debts—it all added up fast.
If the old lady's property and ranch were worth one million dollars, Heather could easily need four hundred thousand just to clear everything and take legal ownership. And it all had to be paid upfront—probate courts didn't do payment plans.
For wealthy people with good estate planning, this wasn't a problem. They had lawyers set everything up in advance, trusts, clear titles, the works.
The real problem hit people like Heather—middle-class families, Southern ranchers, anyone whose relatives didn't understand the system or couldn't afford fancy lawyers. Two generations down the line, the courts and creditors could strip away everything.
In many Southern states, ranchers couldn't even afford to keep their family land anymore. The costs were just too high...
Heather flipped through the various documents, her brow furrowing with worry. Where would she get that kind of money?
The little she'd saved came from working for Bella. Now they expected her to cough up four hundred and fifty thousand dollars? Was this a joke?
She wouldn't ask Bella for a loan. Even if she did, she could never pay it back.
Rather than keep an estate and ranch in Texas, selling it for cash made more sense. Her thinking was practical. But to sell it, she needed all the proper documentation. Without paying the estate taxes, she couldn't get that documentation. The whole thing was a catch-22.
The old lawyer saw her distress and waved cheerfully as he left. "Call me anytime if you need help. My number's in there."
Max took his girlfriend's situation very seriously. He grabbed the documents and studied them carefully, apparently hoping to find some loophole.
But lawyers were experts at wordplay—no way some amateur could find a gap that easily. After staring at the papers forever, he came up empty.
"What should we do?" Heather asked Bella.
Bella felt no envy or resentment about her roommate inheriting an estate. This place was practically at the border—way too remote! The old lady was a typical Texan: she disregarded the law, didn't understand it, and had no clue about estate taxes. She'd made no arrangements before her death, so now all the problems landed squarely on Heather's shoulders.
"Boss, this... how much money does she actually need to pay?" With Max's high school dropout education, trying to parse this mountain of legal documents gave him a splitting headache. All he could see among the clauses, terms, obligations, and responsibilities was one word: money!
He desperately wanted to help his girlfriend, but he had no idea how.