Unforgiven: The Billionaire's Amnesiac Ex-Wife novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: Twenty Million

Jessamine's spare room was over the bakery, and it smelled of yeast and cardboard.

At two in the morning I was sitting on the narrow bed in her sweatshirt with my wet hair in a towel.

I wasn't sleeping.

My phone lay face up on the quilt, and it lit.

The name on the screen was: Don't.

I stared at it, and my thumb moved before I told it to.

I stopped just short.

"That's him," Jessamine said from the doorway. She had a mug in each hand and flour on her forearm. "You renamed him the week you left. I told you not to call him, and you said, fine, I'll make the phone tell me."

"It worked."

"It never once worked."

The screen went dark, and then it lit again.

Below us, the shop's back door banged.

Jessamine put the mugs down. "Nobody's got a key to that but me."

We went down the stairs together, her in front with a rolling pin.

The woman standing in the back hall was dripping onto the tile.

She wore a black raincoat and her cream gloves, and behind her in the alley a car idled with its lights off.

"Sybil," I said.

"Darling." She looked at the rolling pin and then at Jessamine. "I did knock. Your lock is a disgrace."

"You broke my window," Jessamine said.

"I have never broken a window in my life." She stepped past her into the kitchen and set a slim envelope on the steel counter. "Lydia, I'm here to be practical."

"Say it in front of Jessamine."

"I'd prefer not to, but all right." She slid a check out of the envelope. "Twenty million dollars. And a paper that says you will never repeat what you think you heard today."

I looked at the number.

I had twelve million in an account I had never touched, and I did not want eight more.

"What I think I heard," I said.

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