Claire and Nicholas After Divorce novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: The Rest of the Letter

I could not answer him, because I did not know.

Nicholas looked back down at the page.

He read the rest in a flat voice, one line at a time.

"Your trust kept her shares out of my reach and in her daughter's name. So I reached for you instead."

His voice thinned.

"I bought your bank's note on your firm. I told my buyers to drop your contract. I gave you thirty days to fold. I hear you are unwell, and I am sorry for the timing."

He stopped and swallowed.

"It was not bad luck, Linden. It was me. Name a figure and I will pay it."

He lowered the page.

"A figure," he said.

"Nicholas."

"He ruined my father, and then he offered him a number."

"I didn't know any of this."

"I believe you."

He said it so simply that I put my hand on the wall.

"Your mother and my father were friends," he said. "He drew up the trust that kept her shares safe. He did it for her, and for you. That is why my father's firm is a dead office on Ames Row."

"And that is why I have anything to take back," I said.

My knees gave out.

I slid down the wall and sat on the cold floor of the corridor in my good grey suit.

Nicholas sat down beside me, with the letter on his knee and his bandaged hand held away from the floor.

Our shoulders touched.

Neither of us moved them.

"Five years I thought I married a woman who was hiding from me," he said. "You were hiding what my father gave you."

"I was hiding what mine did to yours."

"It's the same thing."

"It isn't. It isn't the same at all."

He turned his head.

We were close enough that I could see where he had missed a patch shaving.

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