He Reversed His Vasectomy for Another Woman, So I Took Everything novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Inventory

Lydia takes her grandmother's pearls off Brianna's neck in front of the whole executive floor and tells the room what Benton did. Benton says her father will hear about it, and her father's text arrives before she has told him anything.

McAlister Holdings takes up the top six floors of a building my great-grandfather put on the harbor, and my name is on the lobby wall.

I walked past the doorman at eleven forty, with Cosimo's man two steps behind me and not saying a word.

Cosimo had insisted on that much.

"He stays in the lobby," he'd said. "He won't touch anyone. He just stands there."

The executive floor was open plan, glass on three sides, and every desk was full.

Brianna Dugan sat outside Benton's office with a green smoothie and a laptop and a long string of pearls at her throat.

I stopped walking.

The strand had been my grandmother's.

She wore it to her own wedding, and she left it to me, and it had lived in a velvet case in my dressing room for eight years.

I had looked for it last week and found the case closed and heavy.

I had thought nothing of it.

Brianna looked up and saw my face, and she smiled.

"Lydia! Did you get my video?"

Half the floor turned around.

I crossed the carpet slowly, and nobody said a word, because everyone in that room worked for my family.

"Those are my grandmother's pearls," I said.

"Benton gave them to me." She touched them. "For the baby. He said you never wore them anyway."

"I wore them every Christmas."

"He said they were a gift."

"He gave you something that wasn't his to give."

I reached around her neck and found the clasp.

It was an old safety clasp, and my fingers knew it better than hers did.

"You can't just take them," Brianna said.

The clasp opened.

I drew the pearls off her throat in one pull, and a woman at the next desk put a hand over her mouth.

"Mr. Collier!" Brianna called. "Mr. Collier!"

His office door opened before she finished.

Benton came out with his sleeves rolled to the elbow and his tie loosened, which was how he always dressed to look busy for staff.

He saw me and the pearls and the open floor, and his face made a decision.

He walked toward me with both hands out and his eyes already wet.

"Lyd. Sweetheart. Let's go inside and talk."

"Here is fine."

"You're upset."

"I'm standing in my family's building holding my family's necklace. I'm not upset, Benton, I'm doing inventory."

Somebody at the back of the room laughed, and then stopped.

Benton lowered his voice, but not enough.

"The doctor warned me you might be like this."

I turned my head slowly.

"Which doctor?"

"Your father's friend. We all agreed that after the last year, with your mother's anniversary coming up..."

"My mother died nine years ago."

"And the foundation work, and the stress." He gave me a kind, sad smile for the room. "I'm so sorry. Everyone, she's been under a lot of pressure."

I had stood next to this man at a hundred dinners and watched him do exactly this to other people.

I had never once been the person he did it to.

I held up my phone.

"Everyone," I said, in a normal voice. "My husband had his vasectomy reversed six months ago. He did not tell me. His assistant is nine weeks pregnant, and she sent me a video of the two of them in my bed."

The silence was total.

"That is the whole reason I'm here."

Benton's smile held for exactly as long as it took him to understand that I meant it.

"That's a private matter."

"You made it public when you sent a video to my phone."

"I didn't send it," he said.

Brianna made a small hurt sound behind him.

"You didn't," I said. "She did. And you didn't stop her."

His eyes went to the floor, and then to the lobby doors, where Cosimo's man stood with his hands folded in front of him.

I watched Benton count the ways this could go badly.

Then his face went smooth again, the way it always did when he'd thought of a better one.

"You should take the afternoon," he said, quietly. "Go home, and rest. Don't make decisions today."

"Too late. I've already made three."

I put the pearls in my pocket and turned to leave.

"Lydia."

I stopped.

"Your father will hear about this," Benton said.

He did not say it as a threat.

He said it as a plain fact he was sure of, and that was what scared me.

My phone buzzed in my hand.

It was a text from my father.

Lunch tomorrow, one o'clock, the club. Do not talk to anyone else about this before then.

I hadn't told my father a single word.

He had not been in the room, and I had not called him.

Behind me, I heard Benton lower his phone.

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