My Ex Sold Me for His Debts, Then My Brother's Enemy Claimed Me novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: Page One

Costa's POV

I had not been in my father's study for twelve years.

Bram held the key out on his flat palm, and I took it, and neither of us said anything.

"You knew," I said.

"I knew there was a book," Bram said. "I read one page when I was twenty-two and shut it. I told myself you were better off."

"You told yourself."

"I was wrong. Do what you want about it."

I wanted to hit him. I didn't have it in me.

Willa had followed us up from the bridge. Rhys had stayed at the iron gate on his own side of the rail, with his hands in his jacket, waiting like a man at his own trial.

She stood next to me at the door of the study.

She didn't touch me, and the mark in my wrist burned anyway.

The key stuck, and I had to put my shoulder into the door.

The room smelled of old pipe smoke and dust.

His coat was still on the chair.

I made myself walk to the desk. Bram stayed in the hall.

The book was in the bottom drawer, under a false panel, in a blue cloth cover gone grey at the corners.

I knew his handwriting before I opened it. It was square and tight and slanted forward, the hand that had signed my school reports.

The first pages were grazing leases and tithes.

Then the columns changed.

Names. Ages. A sum beside each, and a date, and two letters in the margin that came up again and again: O.S.

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