My Billionaire Husband Sent $500K. I Got $300. novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: Nineteen

Callie's POV

He told me everything in the study, standing up, with the lamp on his face.

When he stopped, I took the letter out of his hand and read it myself.

Then I read it again, slowly, to the line about the one year.

"Fifteen years," Dario said. "I hated him for fifteen years. I hated a dead man who was innocent."

"You didn't know."

"I didn't ask. I decided, and I never opened a drawer." His voice cracked. "Lowell kept the drawer shut, and I let him."

I folded the letter along its old creases.

"Can I say something that's going to hurt?"

"Anything."

"You did it again. You took a wrong, and you decided what it meant, and you carried it alone. First your father, then me. You made a decision for me about the license and let me find it in a folder."

He flinched.

"Yes."

"I need you to hear this, because it's the only thing I'm asking for." I stepped closer. "I'm not your safe place. I'm not a locked box you put things in. I'm your wife, and I get the papers, and I get to be angry at you in the same room, in the same hour."

"Yes."

"New rule. Rule six."

"Say it."

"You tell me before you sign anything. You tell me before you decide anything about us. Even if it's bad. Even if Lowell says it's kinder not to."

He nearly laughed.

"Rule six," he said. "Done."

"And one more thing, and I'm not asking."

I set the letter on the desk, on top of my own license, and put both hands against his chest.

"I'm staying," I said. "I'm not staying because I'm scared, or because the baby needs a father, or because you gave me a casino. I'm staying because you walked into a police station at nineteen to save a man you loved, and you're still the same person."

His throat moved.

"I love you, Dario."

He had said it to me once, in bed, with his hands shaking.

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