The Gold Digger's Ledger novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: You Said When You Wanted

I texted the Thursday man back from the sidewalk outside the Marlowe.

Go, I wrote. Order the porterhouse. Say yes to everything, and tell me what she asks.

Then I went home to the townhouse and ate Gus's soup standing at the kitchen counter, and I told neither of them where I'd been.

I was proud of that.

At ten, I came down for a glass of water and saw light under the study door.

It was Honor's voice, level and calm.

"Gus knows. You knew he'd tell her."

"I didn't tell him anything," Tristan said.

"The girl carried a bag of cash down the stairs this morning. Gus doesn't need to be told."

I stopped in the hall with my hand on the banister.

I should have gone upstairs.

I'm a bartender. I have never once walked away from a conversation I was not supposed to hear.

"Tell me what she is," Honor said.

"Mother."

"Tell me, so I can stop wondering. She has the run of the house and my father-in-law's heart. What is she to you?"

There was a long silence.

I could hear the clock on his father's desk.

"She's a paid girlfriend," said Tristan.

My hand tightened on the wood.

"Thirty days and thirty thousand dollars," he said. "It's a contract. She signed it on a pier, and she'll be gone on the twentieth."

"And on the eleventh?"

"On the eleventh I sign. I told you I would."

"And her mother?"

"Leave her mother alone. She has nothing to do with this."

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