He Gave Me Fifty Dollars to Live, I Left Him with Nothing novel · Chapter 25 of 32

Chapter 25: The Boathouse

"I'm not going alone," I said.

Tobias already had his phone out.

"I wasn't going to let you."

"I'm telling you so you know I decided it."

"Noted." He put the phone to his ear. "You decided."

By eight-fifteen a state fraud investigator and a county deputy sat in a dark sedan on the service road behind the Newport boathouse.

Tobias clipped a recorder to the inside of my collar.

His knuckles brushed my throat, and neither of us said anything about it.

"Thirty feet," he said. "If I hear the lighter, we come in."

"The lighter?"

"He's a man who burns what he can't sell."

I walked down to the water alone.

The boathouse doors stood open a hand's width, and yellow light lay across the planks.

Inside, it smelled of salt and varnish.

Philip sat on an overturned dinghy in his wool coat, a lantern at his feet.

He held a cream envelope in one hand and a brass lighter in the other.

"You came alone," he said.

"I walked in alone."

He smiled at that, because he thought it was a lie that favored him.

"Show me," I said.

He held the envelope up to the lantern.

It said *For Maisie, to open at eighteen*, in blue ink, in the slanted hand of the man I had married at twenty-three.

I knew the sevens in it.

My eyes stung and I let them.

"You've had this for four years," I said. "He wrote it for her."

"I found it in the papers when I took over the trust. It was the only thing in that house I didn't have to buy."

"Give it to me."

"Withdraw your statement to the board. Sign what my attorney brought you tonight." He turned the lighter over. "Take the one and a half million. I'll add a second one."

"Three million?"

"Three. Say yes and she gets her father's words and you get a life."

← Chapter 24 · All chapters · Chapter 26 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend