He Took the Fall for Her Lover, So Now He Takes Everything novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Rooftop

Cal walks into Lena's engagement party and says out loud what a hundred thousand dollars bought. Gerald warns him in the lift: the girl he hit has a lawyer.

County General took Joan in because the law said it had to.

The doctor was young, tired and plain about it.

"Her aortic valve is nearly shut. She needed an operation two years ago. Who has been treating her?"

"Mercy General," Cal said. "They told me it was handled."

"Mr. Bracken, nothing was done. Her chart from Mercy shows pills and a bed."

Cal stood very still.

"How long does she have?"

"Weeks if she's careful. Less if she isn't. The operation is expensive, and our waiting list is long."

Behind the curtain, his mother patted the blanket for his hand.

"Go and look at your phone, baby," Joan said. "You've been itching to since we sat down."

"Mom."

"I've watched you stare at that thing for an hour. Whatever she posted, go and see it."

He opened the app.

Under the proposal photo, Lena had tagged a place and a time.

Ridgway Tower, forty-first floor, eight o'clock tonight.

A clerk at the front desk gave him a gray suit jacket from the donation rack.

It was too big in the shoulders.

He wore it anyway.

At the tower he walked in behind a catering crew carrying trays of oysters.

Nobody stopped him.

The rooftop was glass and white flowers and eighty people holding champagne.

Lena stood at the far end in a cream dress, with Preston's arm around her waist.

She was laughing at something a woman said.

She looked up and saw Cal, and the laugh stopped.

For one second her whole face went blank.

Then it came back bright.

"Everyone!" Lena said, loud and warm. "This is Cal, an old friend from home. He's been through a hard stretch."

Eighty people turned to look at the jacket that did not fit him.

Preston crossed the floor with his hand out and a smile ready.

"Cal. Man. Welcome back."

Cal did not take the hand.

"I'm glad you came," Preston said, softer, close enough that only Cal and Lena heard. "I mean it."

Then he reached inside his jacket and took out a thick envelope.

"Twenty thousand. For your trouble, from all of us. Get yourself a place."

He held it out in front of the whole party.

"Twenty thousand," Cal said.

He said it loud enough for the back rows to hear.

"Three years ago it was a hundred. For a confession to a hit and run you committed, Preston, so my mother could have heart surgery."

The music kept playing for a few seconds before someone turned it off.

"She never had it," Cal said. "She was dragged out of Mercy General this morning in a hospital gown."

Phones came up all around the room.

Preston laughed, easy and kind.

"He's confused," he said to the guests. "He's been somewhere hard. Someone get him a drink."

"Lena," Cal said. "Where is the money?"

She stared at him.

Her hands were shaking, and she put them behind her back.

"I don't know what he's talking about," she said. "Cal, honey, you're not well."

Honey.

He had waited three years for her to say his name, and that was the word she chose.

"Say it to my face," he said. "Say you never promised me."

"Security," Preston said pleasantly, and two men in black jackets took Cal by the arms.

"Say it, Lena!"

She turned to the woman beside her and asked for a glass of water.

They walked him to the lift, past forty phones, and he stopped fighting.

He did not need to.

Every one of those phones had his face and his voice on it now.

The lift doors closed on the two guards.

Halfway down, it stopped at the thirty-ninth floor.

A man stepped in alone.

He was tall, silver-haired and sixty, in a navy overcoat with a gold watch on his wrist.

The guards looked at the floor.

"Mr. Bracken," the man said. "I'm Gerald Ridgway. Preston is my son."

"I know who you are."

"Then you know what I can do." Gerald straightened his cuff. "You were released on terms. Do you know them?"

"I read them."

"One of them is that you never contact the victim. Her family, her lawyers and her name are sealed. You will not look for her."

"I don't even know her name."

"Good. Keep it that way." Gerald smiled. "She has been told nothing about your release. She is a fragile girl, and she has a lawyer."

The lift started again.

"If I send her one letter saying that you have been asking about her," Gerald said, "you go back inside before your mother is buried."

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