My Fiancé's Baby Isn't Mine, So Neither Is My Fortune novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: The Binder

Derrick's POV

I caught Dean by the sleeve in the boardroom doorway, with the black binder clamped against his chest, and I stepped between him and the table.

"Not today," I said.

"I need to talk to her," Dean said. His eyes were pink. "Not him. Her."

Through the open door I could see Bradford half rise from his chair.

"Remove that man," Bradford said, loud enough for the hall. "He was fired for theft."

The two guards at the elevator started toward us.

Dean looked at them, and then at me.

He did the smartest thing I had ever seen him do.

He pushed the binder into my chest and said, "Take it out of this building before he sees what's in it."

I took it.

Then I walked him to the stairwell with a hand on his arm, and the guards stopped at the door because I showed them my badge.

I opened the binder on the stair rail.

It held eight months of statements from a bank in Providence.

Every month on the first, nine thousand dollars had gone into an account in Dean's name.

The sender was a company called Narragansett Advisory.

The memo line on every wire said the same word: patience.

"I kept them," Dean said. His hands were shaking. "I thought I'd need them if she sued me."

"You thought they'd protect you."

"I thought they were a bonus."

"For what?"

"For being nice to her." He laughed, and it came out as a cough. "Bradford told me I was a good man for putting up with Heidi's problems. I never asked who was paying me to put up with them."

I turned the pages.

The last one was a copy of the stock grant that had made Dean a shareholder at Auchincloss Maritime.

It carried one signature, Bradford's.

My mouth went dry, because the trust required two.

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