He Waited for Fifteen Years novel · Chapter 1 of 48
Chapter 1: The Bottom File
Reborn on her twentieth birthday, Christina skips Bryant's file and picks Nicholas Santoro, then takes a thrown gift box to the face at a gala until a stranger in an old suit says she's spoken for.
The last thing I remembered was my mother screaming my name as the guardrail came apart.
Then I was sitting in my father's study with a stack of files on my lap.
My father sat across the desk in his gray cardigan, alive, tapping a pen against his knee.
"Christina. You're twenty today. It's time to choose."
A banking family. An oil family out of Dallas. Two old Boston names.
Every file was a deal.
And on top, the way it had always been, was Bryant Ferraro.
I had loved that face since the winter I turned eighteen.
In my last life, I picked him on this exact afternoon.
He gave me seven years of being laughed at.
We shared a last name and not one drop of blood.
His grandfather was a foundling the company's founder took in, and Bryant never stopped resenting my side of the family for it.
The woman he wanted was Shelby Hartley.
When our engagement went public, she drank until her heart stopped at a party in Southampton.
They brought her back.
Over seven years he moved our patents and our buildings, one signature at a time, into a company with Shelby's name on it.
And on my twenty-seventh birthday, she cut the brake line on my father's car, and Bryant let her.
My parents and I went off the curve on Montauk Highway.
The police report summed it up. Brake failure. Driver error.
My mother set a cup of tea at my elbow.
I touched her wrist to feel that it was warm.
"Honey? You're shaking."
"I'm fine."
I moved Bryant's file aside without opening it and went to the very bottom of the stack.
Nicholas Santoro.
The photo wasn't from a party.
A man stood in a dark room under a huge telescope, looking at something off camera.
Calm gray eyes. Hair too long for New York.
Santoro heir. PhD in astrophysics, MIT. Lives on the family ranch in Montana. Declines every invitation east of Chicago.
"Him," I said.
My mother leaned over the desk and her eyebrows went up.
"The Santoro boy? Nobody's seen him in Manhattan in years. I'm not sure he owns a tie."
"That's why."
I wanted someone who had never stood in a ballroom and laughed at me.
My parents looked at each other for a long moment.
Then my father nodded.
"The Santoros supply our graphite. They have more land than some states. But nobody hears about this until it's signed."
"I understand."
That night was the spring gala for the children's hospital, in a ballroom on Fifth Avenue.
The cameras found me on the red carpet.
"Miss Ferraro! We hear you've made a decision!"
"Is it Bryant? Everyone knows you've been after him for two years!"
Then the crowd split, and Bryant walked through it in a navy tuxedo with two security men in front of him.
"Move," he told the reporters.
He pulled Shelby Hartley in against his side.
She was in white, pale as milk, her blue eyes already wet.
"Shelby is the only woman I've ever loved. If my family drags me into a marriage, nobody should expect me to pretend."
Behind me, three girls I'd known since prep school burst out laughing.
"So she's the Ferraro heir. He still won't look at her."
"He only sees the Texas girl."
Shelby lifted her face from his jacket and looked at me.
She was smiling.
The organizers had put Bryant's place card next to mine.
He dropped into his chair and turned his signet ring around his finger.
"Christina. How many times do I have to say it? I won't marry you. How long are you going to keep this up?"
"I'm not keeping anything up."
His fist hit the table hard enough to tip my water glass.
"Then why is your father still pushing this? Your branch has the money, so you get to buy my whole life?"
"Even if we marry, I'll never look at you."
Shelby came to the edge of our table with her eyes red around the rims.
She spoke softly, so the tables near us leaned in to hear.
"Miss Ferraro, please. You had security put my parents out on the sidewalk tonight. My father nearly collapsed. If you want me to leave Bryant, I'll go. Right now."
I stared at her.
I hadn't even seen her parents.
Bryant stood and pulled Shelby behind him.
"This is between you and me. You don't touch her."
"I didn't have anyone thrown out."
"You've never been too proud to do something low."
A man from an energy fund hurried over with a gift box.
"Mr. Ferraro, a little something for the engagement."
Bryant took it out of his hands and threw it at me.
The corner caught my cheekbone.
Something warm ran down toward my jaw.
"Apologize to Shelby," Bryant said. "Or I'll stand up right here and reject this engagement. I will never marry a woman like you."
I touched my cheek and looked at the red on my fingers.
In my last life, I apologized.
"Then don't," I said. "I'm not marrying you, Bryant. I chose someone else this afternoon."
Bryant laughed out loud.
"Someone else. Sure. You've been saying that since you were eighteen."
A chair scraped behind me.
A man I didn't know set a folded white handkerchief on the tablecloth beside my hand.
He wore a charcoal suit ten years out of fashion that fit him perfectly.
"Press that to your cheek," he said. "You're bleeding on your dress."
Bryant looked him up and down.
"Who the hell are you?"
The man didn't look away from me.
"Nicholas Santoro. She's spoken for."
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