Chapter 4: The Husband’s Signature
“Give me the phone,” Daniel said.
Chloe stepped behind Eleanor.
“Why?
Afraid Anna will learn this wasn’t my idea?”
Daniel looked at me.
“She is twisting it.”
“Then untwist it,” I said.
“What did you send her?”
Chloe tapped the screen and read aloud.
“‘Make Anna call her father.
Once Bennett sees the company collapsing, he will have to rescue us.’”
My fingers tightened around my father’s jacket.
Daniel moved toward me.
“Anna, listen to me.”
“Stay where you are.”
“I knew Chloe planned to embarrass you.
I did not know about the ring or your dress.”
“You knew they planned to accuse me.”
“It was supposed to be a family argument.
Nothing more.”
Miriam gave a bitter laugh.
“Two hundred witnesses make a strange family argument.”
Eleanor pointed at me.
“Daniel did what a husband should do.
He tried to protect his family.”
“I was his family,” I said.
“You concealed who you were.”
“I told Daniel my father owned businesses.
He never asked their names.”
Daniel dragged a hand across his face.
“I thought you were exaggerating.”
“Yet you were willing to humiliate me just in case I wasn’t.”
Adrian held out his hand to Chloe.
“Give me the phone.”
“You married me an hour ago,” she said.
“Stand beside me.”
“I married the woman who said her family company was thriving.”
“Our problems are temporary.”
“You used our wedding to frame two women.”
Chloe pressed the phone against her chest.
“You cannot leave.
Your family signed the investment agreement.”
Adrian removed his wedding ring and placed it on the table.
“My father signed nothing.”
Eleanor turned sharply.
“The document arrived this morning.”
“It arrived unsigned.”
Chloe’s smile disappeared.
Daniel came closer to me.
“Anna, our baby deserves both parents.
Don’t make a decision while you’re upset.”
A hard pain tightened across my stomach.
I gripped the edge of the table.
My father caught my elbow.
“Anna?”
“I’m fine.”
Daniel reached toward my belly.
“Let me help.”
I pushed his hand away.
“You handed them my purse.”
His face crumpled.
“I made one terrible mistake.”
“No,” Chloe said.
“You made several.”
“Be quiet.”
“You signed the consent form.”
My father’s attorney looked up.
“What consent form?”
Chloe opened a message on the phone and turned it toward us.
Daniel’s signature appeared beneath a paragraph authorizing Chloe to search my belongings and record my reaction.
“You signed that?” I asked.
Daniel lowered his voice.
“They said they needed proof you were hiding access to Bennett money.”
The pain tightened again.
My knees weakened, and Miriam pulled a chair behind me.
“Sit down, dear,” she said.
“No argument is worth frightening that baby.”
Eleanor watched me clutch my stomach and still did not soften.
“If Anna had been honest from the beginning, none of this would have happened.”
My father faced her.
“You tore the clothes from a pregnant woman because she would not finance your fraud.”
“She married into my family under false pretenses.”
“She married your son, not your debts.”
The security director approached.
“Mr.
Bennett, officers are outside.
Shall I unlock the doors?”
“Yes,” my father said.
“Let them in.”
Chloe suddenly threw the second phone onto the floor.
Her heel came down hard, cracking the screen.
“There,” she said.
“Now your precious messages are gone.”
The director bent down but did not touch it.
“The device is evidence.”
“It is my property.”
A voice came from the ballroom entrance.
“The phone may be yours,” an officer said, “but the cloud account belongs to someone else.”
May you like
Adrian raised his own phone.
“I copied every message before the ceremony.”
