Chapter 21: No Contract Left

Finbar's POV

I had rehearsed it in the car for forty minutes, and none of it survived the sight of her.

She stood on the steps of her father's house in a green dress, with a silver wren at her collar.

Two hundred feet of gravel lay between us.

Behind her stood five brothers and a father, and every one of them was looking at me.

I walked up the drive with the paper in my hand.

"Mr. Hulme," said the eldest, Barrett, in his surgeon's voice. "This is a private family evening."

"I know."

"Then I hope you have a very good reason."

"I have a bad one," I said. "It's all I have."

The older twin folded his arms.

The younger twin looked delighted.

I stopped at the foot of the steps and looked only at her.

"Hattie."

"Finbar."

"I read everything in the box. I went to Toledo and sat in a bookkeeper's kitchen."

I held her eyes.

"I found the account where my own finance chief hid eleven million dollars of a pension fund."

Her face changed.

"I took it to the prosecutor on Monday," I said.

"My finance chief resigned the same afternoon, and he is still calling it a clerical matter."

"I'm sorry," she said. "I would never have wanted it to be him."

"I would have called you. I'd like it on record that I wanted to."

"You said you needed time."

"I did." I breathed in. "I wanted the time to stay angry at you, and I found I couldn't."

Somebody behind her coughed.

I unfolded the paper.

It was the last page of the April contract.

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