Chapter 17: The Study

Jerome's POV

The old man's study had a fire in it, and a desk the size of a car.

Nobody had asked me to sit.

I stood in front of the desk in my torn coat, with grass on my knees, and my hands didn't shake.

I had been inside this house for fourteen months, and I had never once been in this room.

"Stradley," the old man said.

He lowered himself into his chair with the cane across his lap.

"Sir."

"You came in my front gate and gave my guard two names. I heard it from the window."

"It was the quickest way."

"It was the stupidest."

"It was the first honest thing I've done in your house," I said.

He studied me.

He had pale eyes, the same as his son's, but they didn't wander.

"I knew your name a week ago," he said. "My people found it in a county record. Stradley, a structural engineer, a widower's son."

"I let you go on. I wanted to see what you'd do."

"You did nothing for a week. You ate dinner with my daughter, and you sat in my garden."

"I did that for the same reason as the rest."

"Which was?"

"My sister was behind a gate."

He nodded slowly, as if I'd given him a number.

"Then let's talk figures," he said.

He opened a drawer and laid a single sheet on the blotter.

"Chief of capital projects for Winfield Shipping. Your own office. Forty thousand a month before bonuses."

"No."

"Two million, in your sister's name, the day the child is born in this house."

"No."

"And Margo."

I stopped.

"She is hurt," the old man said. "She will be angrier tomorrow than she is tonight. But my daughter does not let go of what she wants."

"If you apologize, she'll take you back. She'll say the reason doesn't matter."

"You'd have the house, the name and a wife who loves you."

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