Unforgiven: The Billionaire's Amnesiac Ex-Wife novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: The Second Time

"Open the door," I said.

My voice was perfectly flat, and I didn't recognize it.

Sybil pressed a button on the wall, and the garage door rattled up into the gray afternoon.

"Ask him," she said. "Ask Stefan what he signed."

I walked out past her.

I didn't run.

At the end of the drive the car waited, and Jessamine leaned out of the window, her face pale.

Stefan got out.

He looked at me, at my hand clenched around a piece of red plastic, and I watched him understand.

"Home," I said to the driver, and got in beside Jessamine.

Stefan climbed into the front seat without a word.

Nobody spoke.

Jessamine held my other hand, hard, all the way back.

At the penthouse I told her to wait in the lobby.

"Lyd..."

"Please. Stay close. I'll text you."

Upstairs, Stefan shut the door.

He stood in the middle of his own living room with his hands at his sides.

I stood opposite him with the phone in my fist and the recording still running.

"Rule one," I said.

"Yes."

"Were you in the car?"

"Yes."

He said it at once.

There was no pause and no wall, and it was worse than any lie.

I sat down on the arm of the sofa because my legs wouldn't hold me.

"Tell me."

"I was twenty-three," Stefan said. "My mother was driving us home from a dinner in the rain. I was in the passenger seat, half asleep. There was a bang and a scream, and the car lurched."

"And?"

"I said stop. I said it three times. I told her we had to go back."

"But you didn't."

"She didn't slow down." He swallowed. "She said it was too late, that there was nothing to be done. When we got home my father looked at the taillight and told me to forget it."

"Did you?"

"No." He closed his eyes. "I paid cash for the repair, a week later. My father made me sign for it so the shop would take it. I signed my name."

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