My Twin Took My Husband. I Kept the Billions. novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: The Clause on Page One

Giles's POV

Hallie sat down on the floor with her back against the sofa and looked at the rice spilled across the rug.

I stayed where I was, three feet away, because I had no right to be closer.

"Say the rest," she said.

"It won't make it better."

"I didn't ask for better."

I nodded.

"I woke up three weeks before your father's living room," I said. "In my own bed, thirty-one years old, with the alarm going."

"And you knew."

"I knew the date on the calendar by my bed.

"I knew who would die in ten years."

She didn't flinch.

She waited for me to go on, and I thought she was the only person I had ever met who could make a silence work for her.

"I drove to Harbor Street before I'd eaten," I said. "There was a bait shop on the lot and a chain-link fence. I stood there and looked at gravel."

"Why?"

"Because it was the last place I'd seen you."

She turned her head and looked at me properly for the first time since I had started talking.

"In the first life your father sent me a contract too," I said. "One Vanderberg daughter, two years. I answered it with two lines and never asked to meet either of you. The only time we spoke was the four minutes at the hotel gala."

"You said my numbers were too good to be true."

"I did. I paid a firm to prove it, out of spite.

"They came back with nothing. Your books were clean to the penny."

"So you came to apologize."

"I came to apologize. I was early, and I was sitting in the car."

I stopped there, because we both knew the next part.

Hallie drew her knees up.

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