Chapter 11: You Collected Me

Jasper did not speak until the elevator doors closed.

Then he said, "Your father's debt. All of it. I own it."

I stared at the numbers climbing over the door.

"All of it."

"Every note he has signed in the past two years. I bought them one at a time."

"Two years."

"Yes."

"Before the gala."

"Yes."

The doors opened on the penthouse hall.

I walked past him without a word.

I went straight into his study and stood in front of the desk.

"Show me."

He opened a drawer and took out a black folder.

I read standing up.

There were forty pages of loan notes, every one stamped with the name of his bank, with Gerald Abbott's signature at the bottom.

The oldest was dated almost two years ago, one week after a fundraiser in October.

At the back was a photocopy of a different paper.

An agreement between Gerald Abbott and Spencer's father.

It had my name in it.

Rosalind, the daughter, to be married to Spencer, the son, on or before her twenty-eighth birthday, in consideration of the sum of...

I looked at the number.

It was larger than my whole studio, my apartment and every piece I have ever made, a hundred times over.

"He sold me," I said.

"He tried."

"For that."

"Yes."

"And you bought the debt so he couldn't."

"I bought enough of it that his family's money would never arrive in time," Jasper said. "Slowly. So nobody would look."

My ears were ringing.

"Why?"

He held my eyes.

"Because two years ago I watched you stand in front of a girl who needed help, and I read that line in this paper, and I couldn't leave it alone."

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