He Chose Her So I Left Carrying His Heir novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: Everything Left

The silence in the atrium lasted until Celia started to laugh.

It was a small, wet laugh, and she did it from the floor with her torn silk around her knees.

"Oh, for heaven's sake," she said. "Look at all of you."

Nobody answered.

"You wanted it," she said, to the room, to Odette, to her own father. "Every one of you wanted a Draycott baby by spring. I only made it easy."

"Celia," said her father.

"Daddy, don't."

"I covered your tuition and your rent. I put my name on a loan for this hospital so my daughter could marry into it." His voice broke on the last word. "And you did this to a girl with one coat."

He turned his back on her.

It was slow, and it was complete.

Then he looked up at Odette on the far side of the marble.

"The Pavilion note comes due in the spring," he said. "I'll be calling every dollar of it."

A murmur went through the board members at table three.

Two of them were already reaching for their coats.

Trudy appeared at my elbow with her handbag on her arm.

"I called the state police from the ladies' room at nine fifty," she said. "I told them somebody was about to commit a fraud on three hundred people. They were quick."

The atrium doors opened and two officers walked in with snow on their shoulders.

One of them said Celia's name.

She got to her feet, with her hair in her face and her hands held out in front of her.

They took her out through the middle of the crowd.

She did not look at Cameron.

She looked at me, once, as she went by.

"You'll deliver where I tell you," she said, and her voice was pleasant and flat. "You'll see."

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