Reborn to Ruin Him novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: The Terms

Gabriel looked as if I had hit him.

I had wanted to say it for forty years and two weeks, and now that I was saying it, my voice did not shake.

"You put me in your house when I was twenty-four," I said. "You took my phone, and my keys, and my name off the door."

"Cami."

"You let me out for funerals. You stood next to me at them, and you did not look at me."

"I know."

"No. You don't." I took a step closer. "I tried to leave half a dozen times. The butler brought me back every time, and he was polite about it."

His jaw worked.

"I wrote you letters," I said. "Every Christmas. I put them under your study door."

"Cami, I."

"What did you do with them?"

He didn't answer.

"That's my first question," I said. "Answer it."

"I kept them."

"Kept them where?"

"In the bottom drawer of my desk." His voice was rough. "Every one. I never opened a single one."

I laughed. It came out ugly.

"Forty letters," I said. "And you never opened one."

"I was afraid of what they'd say."

"They said I forgave you, Gabriel. By the twentieth year they said I forgave you, and that I only wanted you to come and eat dinner with me."

The room was very quiet.

He had gone white under the lamp. Lake water was still drying in his hair.

Then Gabriel Lockwood, the CEO, the man who had never bent for anyone, went down on both knees on my bedroom floor.

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