My Groom Tried to Steal My Family Empire Through Marriage novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: Three Taps, Then One

Brice's POV

She slept facing the brick wall with her fist under her chin, as she had at nineteen on the couch in her father's study.

I lay on my back and watched the ceiling until four in the morning.

I had told her.

I had made the one choice I couldn't take back, with her skin still warm against my arm.

At ten past four, someone knocked on the shop door downstairs.

Three taps, then one. It was a code I'd taught nobody.

I pulled on my jeans and took the stairs barefoot, with the pistol in my hand and my back against the wall.

Through the glass, I saw a woman in a trench coat with her silver hair tucked under a scarf.

I opened the door.

"Hello, Brice," said Diane Wentworth.

She had no driver and no bag, just her pearls and her face, and she looked ten years older than she had at the arch.

"You shouldn't be here, Diane."

"I know where my daughter is, honey. I'm her mother." She looked at the pistol and then at me. "May I come in?"

I stepped aside.

She walked through the dark locksmith's shop, between the key racks and the safes.

She sat on the customer stool.

"I won't take long," she said. "I want you to take her away."

"Away where?"

"Anywhere. The coast. Europe. Until Tuesday." Her voice cracked. "She'll go into that boardroom tomorrow and they'll tear her apart. Preston has the lawyers and the proxy, and Brynn is exhausted and grieving. I can't watch it."

"You could stand beside her."

"I can't." She said it quickly. "You don't understand the position I'm in."

"Then explain it."

She dropped her eyes to her hands.

"I'm asking you as someone who loves her," she said. "You do love her, Brice. Don't think I never saw."

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