Seven Men Called Me Her Stand-In, So I Made Them Pay novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: Father and Son

My mother was sitting up in bed with a tray across her lap when I got to the door of room 312.

The man in the visitor's chair had a silver head, a camel coat, and the posture of someone who billed by the hour.

Neither of them saw me.

"You were at the party," Janet said. She was cutting a square of toast into four smaller squares. "You stood by the stairs with a glass of club soda and said it was a pity about the girl."

"I did," said Anthony's father.

"Then you sent your son out of the country."

"I did that as well."

"Well," my mother said. "You're honest, at least. I'd have taken a lie and thrown it at you, but I've got stitches."

He almost smiled.

"Mrs. Lind, I came to ask you to persuade your daughter to leave the gala alone. You've had a bad week. The Hollin family is a patient enemy and a long one, and I'd like to spare her."

"You'd like to spare your firm."

"That too."

She put down the knife.

"You have his jaw," she said. "Or he has yours. I'd like to say something very pointed about that, but he'd hear it was about him."

"He's in the corridor," said the surgeon from behind me.

I turned.

Anthony was coming down the hall with his coat over his arm, and when he saw who was in my mother's room, he stopped.

His father had risen from the chair.

"Anthony."

"I told you to stay out of it."

"I did, for seven years. That's what I'm here about."

I stepped aside so Anthony could go in, and then I followed him, because nobody told me not to.

The room was small. The three of us and my mother's tray took up all of it.

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