Chapter 16: The Broadcast

Abby's POV

Anson came back at nine with his tie in his pocket and a very pale face.

"He offered me eight percent of the company and Portia," he said. "I told him I'd think about it."

"Did he believe you?"

"He believes everyone wants something."

He held out his phone, and I looked at the photographs of the gray ledger.

Twenty-six million of his money, and an account labeled ABIGAIL W. RESERVE.

He told me what was in the box from Hartford.

I put the phone down and walked to the window, because I did not want him to see my face.

Twenty-five years of foster homes, and the man who had called me sweetheart had closed my file after eighteen months.

"I want him in handcuffs," I said, when I could talk.

"Then we do it in public."

The television on his kitchen wall had been muttering all morning.

Now a woman in a red blazer said, "We go live to Stamford, where the director of Harmon Genetics is about to make a statement."

I turned around.

A gray-haired man in a lab coat stood at a podium, squinting into a wall of microphones.

His hands were gripping both sides of the stand.

"I wish to correct the record," he said. "The paternity result for Miss Abigail Whitcroft was falsified."

"I was approached by representatives of Miss Rudkin and offered a large sum."

"I am deeply ashamed."

Anson swore softly.

My face stared back at me from the corner of the screen, taken at the party, with the check in my hand.

My phone began to ring, and ring, and ring.

Reporters. Numbers I didn't know. A blocked caller.

I didn't answer any of them.

I watched the man at the podium, and I saw what I had seen in my father's CFO.

He was sweating.

"He's lying," I said. "That man is terrified."

"Of course he is," Anson said. "Lawrence is the biggest client that lab has."

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Real Heiress Don't Need Your Love from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.