They Sold Me for Five Million, So I Collected It Myself novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: The Landing

Dane opened the door, and the stairwell was full.

Two campus police officers stood on the landing.

Behind them were Roland in his flannel and Noreen in her good cream coat, and behind them, climbing the stairs with flour on his forearms, was the baker from the shop below.

Under him, on every step, were customers holding paper bags of rolls.

Nobody was buying anything.

"There she is," Noreen cried, pressing a tissue to her face. "Tamar. Honey. Thank God."

The tissue arrived a half second after the tears.

The older officer cleared his throat. "Miss Brubaker. Your family reports you were taken from campus yesterday by a young man you barely know. Are you here of your own free will?"

"Yes." I said.

"Do you want to leave with your aunt and uncle?" the officer asked.

"No."

"She's been brainwashed!" Roland said. "He's rich. She's twenty. She doesn't know what she's doing."

I reached into the back pocket of my jeans, where I had folded the paper the magistrate gave us.

I unfolded it and held it out.

"Marriage certificate," I said. "County of Ashmont, yesterday at noon. I'm a legal adult and I am married. I'd like him to read it out loud."

The officer read it, and said, "Huh."

Noreen stopped crying.

The tissue dropped.

"This is a civil matter, ma'am," the officer told her, gently. "She's of age. It isn't kidnapping."

"It's a scam!" Noreen turned on the stairwell, where eighteen strangers and a bag of croissants were watching her. "That man's family owes us five million dollars. For eighteen years we have fed this child. I have it in writing."

She pulled out the red ledger.

Of course she had it with her.

She opened it to a marked page and began to read in the voice she used for grace at Christmas.

"Rent, four hundred dollars a month, two hundred sixteen months. Eighty-six thousand four hundred. Food, nine thousand a year. Clothes. Winter coats, nine at a hundred and ten. Dental work. Orthodontics, two sets of braces, eleven thousand eight hundred."

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