His Guilt Made Me A Billionaire novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Lease Day

Cora serves Tanya a thirty-day notice in the Marlowe Tower lobby while Tanya livestreams, and Beckett arrives to say he promised her the place.

I called Nate from the back of the car.

"Somebody took a picture of our building," I said. "Lock the bakery door tonight and keep your phone on."

"Is this the stairs girl?"

"Yes."

"Then I'm keeping the rolling pin by the register," my brother said. "Cora, eat something. You sound like a spreadsheet."

I laughed for the first time in a week.

Then I went home and wrote Tanya Abbot's notice with my own hands.

On Friday morning I walked into the lobby of Marlowe Tower with the folder under my arm and my cane tapping the marble.

Tanya was waiting by the fountain in a white coat, holding her phone up at arm's length.

A small red light blinked at the top of it.

"Hi, everyone," she said to the screen. "This is Cora, the woman I told you about. She's here to do my renewal."

Six hundred people were watching.

The number climbed while I crossed the floor.

"Good morning, Tanya."

"Do you want to say something to my followers? They're so worried about you."

"I'd like to say something to you."

I opened the folder and took out two documents.

The first was the notice.

"This is thirty days' written notice. The lease on unit 41 ends on the first of next month. The building has received the instruction from the owner of record."

Her smile did not move.

"Beckett won't let you."

"The owner of record is Lowry Holdings, and I sit on its board as of Monday."

A woman near the concierge desk lifted her phone.

Tanya's eyes flicked to the doorman, and then she turned the camera so it faced me instead of her.

"Wow," she said, in the voice she used on her posts. "You're throwing me out, after what happened? After you made that video yourself?"

"I didn't make the video."

"You told the police I did it."

"I haven't spoken to the police."

Tanya's followers were typing faster than I could read.

I handed her the second document.

"This is the agreement you signed when you moved in. Page six."

She looked down.

"Section nine. You may not film or broadcast from any common area of a Lowry property. You may not make public statements about any Lowry employee or director. The penalty is the immediate end of tenancy and a payment of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars."

She did not take the page.

The little red light was still blinking.

"You're filming in the lobby right now," I said. "And you called me a liar in front of six hundred people, on a phone I'm looking at."

Her mouth opened and shut.

Then she turned the camera off and tucked the phone into her sleeve.

"You wrote that clause," she said, very low, without the voice. "You wrote every one of those clauses, you little clerk. You wrote them for girls like me."

"I wrote them for girls who didn't know how to behave."

I put the page back in my folder.

"Thirty days. The notice is on your door and in your email, and I kept a copy for myself."

"Beckett promised me this place."

"Then he can tell me himself."

I turned to go.

My hip had started to ache from standing, and I leaned on the cane harder than I wanted anyone to see.

Behind me Tanya said, softly, "He'll never choose you. You know that, don't you? Not once in six years."

I kept walking.

The doors opened onto a gray street and a line of waiting cars.

I was halfway to the curb when a black sedan I knew better than my own coat pulled in ahead of mine.

The back door opened.

Beckett got out without a coat and stood in the wind with his tie loose and his face hard.

"Cora."

"I'm not talking about it here."

"You gave notice on the Marlowe unit."

"Yes."

He took one step toward me, close enough that I smelled the soap he had used for six years.

"I can't let you evict her," he said. "I promised."

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