Contract Over: You're Free to Go novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: My Husband

Declan's POV

Sixty cameras turned toward me, and I did not know where to put my hands.

So I left them where they were.

Margot looked at me over the heads of the reporters.

Then she stepped out from the front row and walked down the middle of the aisle.

She did not hurry.

Reporters turned in their chairs to watch her go by.

A woman in the third row lifted her phone to follow her.

She stopped about an arm's length from me, close enough that I could see her pulse in her throat.

She faced the cameras, not me.

"His name is Declan Cronin," she said. "He's my husband."

Her voice was clear and even.

I had heard her use it on boardrooms.

I had never heard her use it on me.

"A month ago I stood in this room and told four hundred people that he was no one worth mentioning. I said it on purpose. I said it because my father was watching, and I thought a lie was the only way to keep a child safe."

A shutter clicked.

"That child is six years old. His name is Archie. His mother was my sister, and I did not tell the man who has raised him alone for four years, because I was afraid he would take his son and run, and my father would catch him."

Someone in the second row was crying.

I didn't turn to see who.

"I hid him from my family for three years," Margot said. "I hid the truth from him for the same three. I used his love for his son as a lock on a door he didn't know was shut. And when he said the words and walked out of that ballroom, it was the first honest thing anyone in my life had done in front of me in years, and it was exactly right."

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