My Twin Took My Husband. I Kept the Billions. novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: The Keep

I took the folded contract from his hand and opened it to page four.

My sentence was still there in my own handwriting, with his signature under it.

Three hundred people had gone silent under the tent.

I reached into my jacket and took out an envelope I had been carrying since Monday.

"What's that?" Giles said.

"Open it."

He did, and I watched him read the number twice.

"It's the loan," I said. "Twelve million dollars, with interest, three months before it was due. I told you I'd repay it before the two years ended."

"Hallie."

"You don't hold a dollar of mine anymore. Nobody does."

The older banker in the third row put his hand over his eyes.

He had handed me the day's valuation of the trust that morning.

It said one billion and ninety million dollars.

I had folded the page into my pocket and not looked at it again.

"Now the exit," I said. "Two years, then a clean exit. You wrote that I'd never feel held."

"I did."

"Page one says the daughter who signs has read the terms in full."

"It does."

"I've read them again." I turned the pages slowly, one at a time, where all of them could see. "Every one."

I took the fountain pen from my father's breast pocket, where he had put it that morning without being asked.

Under my sentence, in my own hand, I wrote one more.

This contract has no end date. Either may leave at any time, and neither will.

Then I signed my name.

I held the pen out to him.

"Or you can find another daughter," I said.

He did not laugh, though his mouth shook.

He read the new line once, and his eyes did not change.

Then he took the pen from my fingers and signed under my name without a word.

The tent came apart.

They clapped and shouted, and somewhere in the front row my father was crying into a handkerchief again, and the charity chair stood on her chair with her hat tilted.

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