Don't Give Me Tainted Love novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: The Deal

Dalton's POV

I opened the door before Roxanne could knock.

She was wearing the camel coat and a smile that had been fixed in place hours ago.

"Dalton. You look awful."

"You're not coming in."

"I have the original." She tilted her phone so the lit screen caught the porch light. "I thought you'd want it more than you want to be rude."

Melanie stood behind me in the hall.

I felt her go still.

"Ten minutes," I said. "In the kitchen. Eric's asleep in the den."

Roxanne walked in and looked around the kitchen.

She had never been inside it.

She set her phone face up on the island and her bag beside it, and she looked at Melanie with a bright, hungry interest.

"You've lost weight," she said. "Eight years of lying will do that."

"Say what you came to say," Melanie said.

"I came to make a trade."

She opened a folder on her screen and turned it toward me.

It was a single video file with a grey thumbnail and a date six years old.

I did not touch it.

Melanie did not look at it at all.

She looked at the faucet.

"I won't play it," Roxanne said. "I'm not a monster. But it's here, and it's whole, and I'm the only person alive who can hand it over besides Bradley himself."

"What do you want?"

"Your shares in Ames Builders. All of them."

I almost laughed.

"My father's firm."

"Bradley's been planning to squeeze you out for years. I'll be the one to hold your seat, and then I'll give it back when we're married."

The kitchen went silent.

"When we're what?" I said.

"Married, Dalton." She said it softly. "I'll wait. You can't stay with her after tonight. You know that. Nobody could."

I looked at Melanie.

She had gone white, but her chin was up.

"I'll buy it," Melanie said.

"With what?"

"Five hundred thousand dollars. Tonight. From my own account."

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