After My Fiancé Humiliated Me, I Ruined Him novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: Grasse

"Then we'll find a notary," Solène said.

She said it to the officer, and she said it like an order.

By six that evening she'd made the Paris notary send her a copy of what she'd signed.

It came by email, twenty-two pages, in French.

We read it at Julien's kitchen table with the stew pot between us and nobody eating.

Julien translated with one finger on the screen.

He stopped on page nine.

He read it once to himself. Then he read it aloud.

"If the future wife breaks the engagement before the wedding, or ends the marriage within five years, her shares in Maison Valery pass to the husband in full, as compensation."

Solène put her face in her hands.

"I signed that," she said through her fingers. "I signed that in October with a pen he gave me. He said it was all standard. He said French notaries love paper."

"So you can't leave him," I said, "and you can't marry him."

"Either way he gets my forty percent."

Julien shut the laptop.

He went to the window and stood there with his back to us.

I could see his reflection in the black glass.

He looked ten years older.

His phone rang.

It was his grandmother, from the south.

She'd gone down to her house in Grasse the week before, as she did every spring.

She'd seen the video of her grandson throwing a man into the street.

Julien put her on speaker.

"Is the girl hurt?"

"Her cheek," Julien said. "She's here."

"Which girl?" Solène said. "There are two of us now, Grand-mère."

"Both of you. Come down. Tomorrow." The old voice didn't waver. "And Julien. Your great-grandfather never trusted a Paris notary in his life. Everything he signed, he kept a copy in Grasse. It's in the cellar."

"What's in the cellar?"

"Paper. A hundred and twenty years of it. Bring the American. She likes numbers."

We took the first train south in the morning.

Solène slept against the window with a scarf over her cheek.

Julien did the crossword in pen and got every answer.

I watched France go by and checked my phone every four minutes.

Ashton had texted me a dozen times since the street.

At Cannes a car took us up into the hills.

The road climbed through pines and stone walls, and then the fields opened out.

Long green rows, low and neat, running down the slope.

"Jasmine," Julien said. "It won't flower until August. The roses are first, in May."

"What does it smell like now?"

"Dirt." He almost smiled. "Good dirt."

The house was old yellow stone with blue shutters, on a terrace over the fields.

His grandmother was standing at the top of the steps with her pencil in her hair.

She took Solène's chin in her hand and turned it to the light and looked at the bruise for a long time.

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