Downgrade My Ride? I'll Upgrade My Groom! novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: Midnight

Nobody invited him in.

He stood on the step with the porch light on his uncombed hair, and moths knocking against the lamp above him.

"Monday," I said.

"Forty million. Every note. The State Street building, the warehouses, the house." He glanced across the dark lawn toward his own roof. "They'll take the house, Olivia."

"Then they'll take the house."

He flinched.

Clay leaned one shoulder on the doorframe in his T-shirt and pajama pants and said nothing.

My father finally looked at him.

"Eastman Capital could refinance it," he said. "One phone call. You've turned down worse risks than mine for less."

"I turn down risks like yours before breakfast," Clay said. "But go on."

"I'm not asking you." My father turned back to me. "I'm asking her. He'll do it if you ask him. Everyone at that gala could see it. He'd do anything you asked."

"He would," I said.

"Then ask him."

He said it the way he used to say "eat your peas."

I pulled Clay's flannel shirt tighter around me.

The night smelled like cut grass and the lake.

"You had me hit by a van," I said.

"I've told you..."

"No. You told a boardroom this morning your driver did it on his own. To my face. With your glasses in your hand." I took a breath. "And now you're on my husband's step at midnight asking for forty million dollars."

"For the family."

"Which one?"

He didn't answer.

"Here's my price," I said. "Saturday, you were going to stand up in that ballroom and introduce Bailey. Do it. Introduce her. And then say the rest."

He went very still.

"Say you paid for the crash," I said. "Say you put Mom's dress in that car. Say you sat in a boardroom and lied about it. Out loud, at the wedding, in front of every person who watched me get called unstable. Then Clay can make his phone call."

"That's not a price. That's an execution."

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