True Heiress vs. Fake Queen Bee novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: What It Costs

I sat down on the step beside her.

The stone was freezing through my thrift-store dress.

"No," I said. "Not once. He called you Lorna's girl."

She nodded.

Then she put her face on her knees in my mother's silk and cried without making any noise.

I didn't touch her.

I just stayed on the step until Lorna came out and sat on her other side.

At eight the next morning, my father was at a corner table in the campus hotel restaurant.

Sunday brunch on homecoming weekend.

Every table full of alumni in team scarves.

A leather folder sat beside his coffee.

He looked up when the three of us came in, Brielle in jeans and a hoodie, Lorna, and me.

He stood, out of habit.

Brielle walked to the table first.

She opened the folder.

The check was clipped to the front, made out in his handwriting.

She unclipped it and laid it face down by his saucer.

Then she took the confidentiality agreement out and tore it in half, and in half again.

The table of alumni next to us stopped talking.

"My birthday's in March," she said. "I'm telling everybody."

She put the pieces in his coffee.

Then she walked back and stood behind me, next to her mother.

My father looked at the soggy paper for a while.

"Sit down, Olivia."

"I'll stand. This won't take long."

I'd written the list on my hand in pen at six in the morning so I wouldn't soften it.

"One. You acknowledge Brielle in writing as your daughter, with her birthday, and no gag order. Ever."

"Two. The Haldane Scholars money goes to the university as a permanent endowment. Every award, for good. No chairman can touch it."

"Three. You apologize to Lorna. To her face. You've never once done it."

"Four. You don't call me. Not on Sundays, not through your assistant."

"When you've done all of it, and not before, I'll decide if I call you."

He looked past me at the alumni pretending not to listen.

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