He Ruined Me—Now He Crawls Back Begging novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: The Driver

The whisper went through the room ahead of him.

Arango. That's Arango.

He walked the whole length of the party with his left leg dragging a little more each step, and nobody got in his way.

He stopped beside me. Not in front of me.

His forehead was wet. His hands were empty.

"You said wherever I wanted to stand," he said quietly.

"I did."

I held out the microphone.

He took it.

"My name is Santiago Arango," he said to two hundred people. "I'm the man who was under that grille."

He pointed at it without looking.

"For ten seconds, my headlights were on the driver's face. Blonde. Crying. A pink phone with little stones on it, at her ear."

He turned and looked at Bella.

"Hello again," he said.

Bella backed up into the cake table.

I took the rhinestone out of my jacket pocket.

Then I reached out and took Bella's phone out of her hand. She was too shocked to hold on.

Pink case. Rows of little flat stones. Near the bottom corner, one empty setting with a ring of dried glue.

I pressed the rhinestone into it.

It fit.

I held the phone up so the front rows could see. Then I handed it to the man in the tuxedo who'd asked if I was the one driving.

"Pass it back," I told him.

He did.

The phone went hand to hand through the crowd, and the murmur followed it all the way to the doors.

My father pushed forward. "This is a circus. A stolen car part and a cartel..."

I opened the folder and held page two up to the microphone.

"Your lawyer wrote down what you did, Dad. One sentence. That's your signature under it, the one you use on birthday cards."

"It's forged."

"Your lawyer drafted it," said Santiago. "He's standing by the bar."

Two hundred heads turned to the bar.

A gray-haired man there set his glass down and walked straight out to the tent.

Then the front doors opened again.

Gino's father came across the marble in an old overcoat, small and bald and slow, with two men in plain suits and badges on their belts behind him.

The room went dead silent for him in a way it never had for my father.

He walked straight to his son.

Gino said, "Pop."

The old man reached into his son's breast pocket and took out a little plastic case.

A black memory card.

He handed it over his shoulder to the nearest detective without looking.

"My son has been keeping that from you," he said to the detective. "The girl gave it to him. Ask him what's on it."

Gino was white to the lips.

"There's no wedding," the old man said, to the room. "My family doesn't marry a hit-and-run. And it doesn't stand by while a man sells his own daughter."

He looked at my father.

My father opened his mouth and found nothing in it.

I held the microphone out to Bella.

"Your turn," I said. "Say it."

She looked at the microphone.

She looked at the grille, and at the detectives, and at Gino, who wasn't looking at her.

She pressed her hand to her heart.

"Seventy-two," I said into the mic. "Strong and regular. Say it, Bella."

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