“You’ve done your research.”

Her lips tightened. “You don’t believe me.”

“I think you’d better leave.” Zachary cocked his head toward the door. “London’s dead. She has been for over twenty years, so take whatever it is you’re peddling and go back home, before I haul you out of here and drop you on the front steps with the rest of the garbage.”

“How do you know London’s dead?”

His throat closed and he remembered, with gut-wrenching clarity, the accusations, the fingers thrust in his direction, the suspicious looks cast his way. “I’m serious. You’d better leave.”

“I’m serious, too, Zach.” Ramming her hands into her pockets, she took one last look around the huge room, then faced him again. “You may as well know-I don’t give up easily.”

“You don’t have a prayer.”

“Who’s in charge?”

“Doesn’t matter.” His voice was hard, his features drawn with brutal resolution. “You can talk to my brothers and sister, my mother, or the attorneys who are acting as the gods of finance in my father’s estate, but no one’s going to give you the time of day. You may as well save your breath and my time. Take my advice and go home.”

“This could be my home.”

“Bull.”

“It’s too bad Katherine isn’t alive.”

Zachary’s blood ran cold at the mention of his beautiful and much-too-young stepmother. There was an unmistakable resemblance between the young woman standing so arrogantly before him and his father’s second wife, Katherine-Kat-the woman who’d made his life a living hell for years. “Is it really too bad, or is it just convenient?” he asked, keeping his expression bland.

She blanched a bit.

“Get out.”

“You’re afraid of me.”

“As I said, Get out.”