After Rejection, Divorced Luna Becomes a Famous Doctor novel · Chapter 17 of 32

Chapter 17: The Kitchen

"Double," Fergus repeated into the phone.

"For five years," the old man said. "Cash. I'm ninety, kid. My granddaughter's tuition is due."

I took the phone out of Fergus's hand.

"Don't sign anything," I said. "Give me one hour."

"Doctor, it's double."

"One hour. Please."

"One hour," he sighed.

I ran across the street, up the narrow stairs, and opened my laptop on the bed.

The Kenley completion payment sat in my account exactly where it had sat since March.

Two hundred thousand dollars.

I had promised myself I wouldn't spend a cent of it on the custody fight.

I'd never promised anything about a clinic.

I sat there for one minute, and then I went back down.

The landlord lived three doors down from the shoe store.

He answered in a cardigan.

"Kenley doesn't want your store," I said on his front step. "They want it dark. They'll pay you double to keep it empty, so I can't use it."

"Their money's still green, Doctor."

"So is mine." I held up my phone with the bank screen showing. "Forty thousand dollars. Today. A year up front and the rest for whatever the building needs. And I'll keep the shoes."

He blinked.

"The shoes?"

"On a shelf. With their tags. In case anybody ever comes back."

He looked past me at Fergus, standing at the bottom of the steps with his arms folded.

"Your grandfather fed my whole family for free during the strike in '78," the old man said to him. "Did you know that?"

"He told me."

The landlord looked at me for a long time.

Then he stuck his hand out across the doorway.

"Forty," he said. "And the shoes stay."

I shook it.

"Kenley money," Fergus said on the walk back, "buying the room Kenley tried to buy."

"Veronica's going to hate it."

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