The Widow's Fate They Chose Was My Escape Plan novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Paid in Full

Willa reads Conrad's red card aloud, signs the Keane prenup without reading it and hands back her ring, then learns the wedding has been moved to tonight.

I stood up with the red card in my hand.

Nobody had noticed it yet, because Bridget was crying and Bennett was holding her.

"Conrad," I said.

My eldest brother turned around.

"What does this say?"

I held it up so the whole room could see his handwriting.

Bennett looked first.

Then my second brother.

Then Bridget, who stopped crying so fast that I heard her breathe in.

"Read it out," I said. "You wrote it."

Conrad's face went white.

"Willa, give me that."

"Willa," I read. "Keane. Paid. With a line under it."

The room was silent.

My third brother took a step toward me, and I stepped back and kept the card high.

"The draw was for show," I said. "You took the Keanes' money before anyone touched the box."

"It was a deposit," my second brother said. "The Keanes were going to pay for one of you either way."

"Either way, meaning me."

He didn't answer.

Conrad tried his old trick and reached for my shoulder.

I let his hand hang in the air until he dropped it.

"It was for the company," he said. "For all of us. The port contract was never going to come any other way."

"So say it plainly," I said. "You sold me for a port."

"We did what we had to do."

"Then I'll do what I have to do."

My third brother opened his mouth, and I looked at him until he shut it.

The back of my hand still burned where he had struck it.

"Bridget was never going to draw Keane," I said. "Was she?"

Bridget lifted her wet face.

"Willa, I swear I didn't know about the card."

She had not looked at it once, and she had not asked what it said.

I let that sit between us.

"All right," I said.

I took the prenup out of Conrad's hand before he could close his fingers on it.

The Keane lawyers had flagged the signature line with a yellow tab on the last page.

I did not read the other pages.

I did not want to give my brothers an hour to find a better price for me.

I borrowed Bennett's pen from his breast pocket, because he was standing closest, and signed my name.

"Willa Harcourt," I said as I wrote it, so everyone could hear.

Then I put the red card on the table, face up, on top of the papers.

"Frame it," I said to Conrad. "It's the only honest thing you've ever written about me."

My second brother cleared his throat.

"You're upset. You'll thank us when you're a widow with the Keane settlement."

"I will," I said. "Thank you."

He had no idea I meant it.

I pulled the ring off my left hand.

Bennett's mother's diamond, the one I had worn for two years, caught the light from the candle.

Bennett saw what I meant to do.

"Don't be dramatic," he said.

I walked to the door and unlocked it myself, and the housekeeper was standing outside with the tea tray.

She had been there the whole time.

I put the ring on the tray.

"Please give this to Miss Bridget," I said. "She'll want to wear it. She might as well have the real one."

The housekeeper did not blink.

She nodded and took the tray inside.

Behind me, Bridget made a small, wounded sound.

I didn't turn around.

In my last life I had spent a whole day begging in this room.

In this one, it had taken nine minutes.

I went down the front steps with the Keane envelope under my arm.

A black car idled at the curb with a driver beside it.

Footsteps came fast across the pavement behind me, and a hand closed on my arm.

"You're doing this to punish me," Bennett said.

He kept his voice low, because the staff were watching from the windows.

"You can't stand that I picked her."

"I'm doing it to leave you," I said.

His grip tightened.

"Rory Keane is going to die in a bed, Willa, and you'll crawl back to me with nothing. I'll be waiting. I'll even be nice about it."

I looked at his hand until he let go of my arm.

"You'll be waiting a long time," I said.

I opened the car door.

The driver closed it behind me, then leaned down to the window.

"Miss Harcourt," he said. "Mr. Desmond Keane asked me to tell you something before you came."

"What?"

"He has moved the wedding up," the driver said. "It's tonight."

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