My Family Faked Mom's Death to Stop My Wedding—My Adopted Sister Had My Fiancé's Baby novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Ring Goes Back

She returns the ring and the revocation letter on the chapel steps, leaves her family, and finds a stranger on her grandmother's stoop.

I ended the call and handed Ethan his phone.

The church was on its feet.

Half the parish was shouting at once, and the priest had both hands raised and nobody was listening.

I walked down the center aisle and nobody stopped me.

Outside, October wind hit the steps hard.

The black cars waited at the curb in a line, with their drivers looking at the sky.

Dad caught up with me halfway down.

He took my elbow, and I took it back.

"Livia, enough." His voice shook. "Come home. We'll sit down as a family."

"You buried sandbags, Dad."

"Your mother loved you. We were buying time."

"You were buying time with her funeral."

Lorenzo and Rocco came down behind him.

Neither of them could look at me.

"Livia, listen," Lorenzo said. "Claire nearly lost the baby. Mom had to be with her. It was one year."

"It was a funeral," I said. "I cried beside that box for two days. I begged you to let me see her."

"Livia, you'd have..."

"I'd have held the baby," I said. "I'd have wished them both well and gone home. You didn't give me the chance to be decent."

Lorenzo shut his mouth.

Rocco finally looked up.

"We didn't think you'd find out," he said, and it was the worst thing he could have said.

Ethan came out last.

He walked straight to me with both hands open, and his face did what it always did when I was close to crying.

It softened.

"Livia. Please. Not here, not on the steps."

"Here is where you all picked."

"It was paperwork, that's all." He lowered his voice. "I put Claire on my papers so she could be on the hospital forms. I never touched her. I love you."

I looked at his hand.

I looked at the tan line on his finger where a wedding band would sit.

There was a pale strip on it, the exact width of one.

I had never noticed it in five years.

He took it off for me, every time he saw me.

I reached into my coat and took out my ring.

"Livia, don't."

I put it in his palm and closed his fingers around it.

"I'm having my lawyer send you a letter by tonight," I said. "You're off every account of mine, and your authorization is revoked. Your cards stop at noon tomorrow."

His face went blank.

"You can't do that. We're engaged."

"We're not."

"My firm runs on those relationships, Livia. You can't just..."

"You should have thought of that before you married my sister."

Behind him, a group of mourners had stopped on the steps to listen.

Ethan flinched.

He had said it aloud in front of them, and he couldn't take it back.

Dad took a step toward me.

"If you walk down those steps, you stay out of my house," he said. "I mean it. No holidays. No phone."

"Then we're agreed."

"You have nothing without this family."

"I have Nonna's house," I said.

I saw something cross his face, too quick to read.

"Don't sell that house," he said. "Not yet. Wait until you're calmer."

"I'm calm."

"Livia."

"I'm very calm," I said, and walked down the rest of the steps.

My car was in the second row.

I drove into the city with the radio off and both hands on the wheel.

Nobody called me.

Nobody ever called when I left, I realized.

They waited until I came back.

The townhouse on East 74th Street was dark, with the shutters closed and the brass numbers gone green.

My grandmother had raised me in it every summer.

She had left it to me, and all her trust, and a letter I had never been able to finish reading.

I parked and climbed the stoop with my key already out.

A man was sitting on the top step.

He wore a dark overcoat and no hat, and he stood up when he saw me.

He was tall, with short dark hair and grey eyes, and he had the stillness of someone who had been there for hours.

"Ms. Benedetti," he said.

"If you're a reporter, my father's lawyer is the one you want."

"I'm not a reporter. I was at the funeral."

"I didn't see you."

"I stood at the back of the church. You walked right past me."

He almost smiled. "You were busy."

I held my keys in my fist with the sharp end out.

"Who are you?"

"Bruce Rayne."

I had never heard the name.

"Your grandmother asked me never to let you sell this house."

My stomach dropped.

"Nonna's been dead three years."

"I know. I was at the funeral. You sat in the last pew." He stopped. "Ms. Benedetti, I own the bank debt on your father's company."

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