He Chose His First Love. I Own His Empire. novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: What Benton Took

I didn't ask him in the car.

I waited until the boxes were stacked in the cottage and the kettle was on.

Benton stood by the door, in the same black coat, and he did not sit down.

"Dalton said ask you," I said. "So I'm asking."

"You should sit first."

"I've sat enough this week."

He nodded, and rubbed the scar through his eyebrow with one thumb.

"I was nineteen," he said. "Odile put me in the family foundation's office for the summer. My mother had been dead six months, and I had a key to everything because nobody thought to take it back."

"And?"

"And four hundred thousand dollars left the foundation account in July. The auditor traced it to a login that was mine."

"Did you take it?"

"No."

He said it plainly, without any heat.

"Dalton's father took it. He'd lost money on a hotel in Phoenix, and he used my login because I was there and it worked. Adaline found out, and she came to my room the night before the audit with a cup of tea."

I waited.

"She said there were two ways to do it," he said. "A criminal referral with my name on it, or I could leave the family quietly and stay a thief in everyone's memory. She said nobody would ever have to hear what her husband did."

"And you agreed."

"Odile's son was dying. He had four months left." His eyes were on the floor. "I couldn't be the one to tell her that he'd stolen from her own foundation."

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