I Signed Away Eight Million to Leave Him novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Amicable
At the gala, my fiance proposes to another woman on the stage of the ballroom I built, and the next morning I sign away eight million dollars and walk out, straight into a lie.
When my fiance proposed to another woman, I was standing just below the stage.
I was close enough to see the ring box shake in his hand.
Brennan Fitzroy never shook.
He went down on one knee in front of four hundred people in black tie.
Margaux Lorillard put both hands over her mouth, like she'd practiced it in a mirror.
She probably had.
The ring was a pear-cut diamond the size of a thumbnail.
Mine was still on my finger.
"Yes," Margaux said into the microphone. "Oh my God, yes."
Brennan stood and kissed her, and the room went wild.
Then he turned back to the crowd and lifted his glass.
"Before anyone asks," he said, "I want to be honest with you all."
His eyes found me in the front row.
"Neve and I ended things amicably."
Somebody behind me said, "Oh, thank God."
"I want to thank her for seven wonderful years," Brennan said. "Neve, truly. Thank you."
He smiled at me.
The same smile he used on investors and waiters.
Two words, amicable breakup, and four years of engagement were gone.
Nobody had told me we'd ended anything.
I'd zipped his garment bag that afternoon.
"And one more thank you," he said. "To Margaux, for designing this beautiful room."
Every head tipped back to look at the ceiling.
I looked up too.
Gold leaf. Plaster vines. A center medallion eight feet across.
I had spent eighteen months on a scaffold under that ceiling.
I had mixed the green on those walls by hand, a dozen times, until it was right.
Margaux blew a kiss up at the medallion.
The applause got louder.
A woman beside me leaned toward her husband.
"That's the girlfriend? She's still here?"
"Some girls don't know when to let go of a family like this."
"Seven years and no wedding. I'd take the hint."
Her husband laughed into his champagne.
I was the joke now.
The mill-town girl who'd hung on to the Fitzroys with her fingernails.
Brennan's mother stood at the edge of the stage in pearls, clapping slowly.
Honora Fitzroy caught my eye and gave me the smallest nod.
She had picked my dress tonight.
Now I knew why it was gray.
When the applause began in earnest, I didn't cry.
I stood there and clapped twice, so everyone could see my hands were steady.
That was the moment the last of my love for him went out, like a pilot light.
Across the ballroom, by the back doors, one man wasn't clapping.
Corbin Fitzroy, Brennan's uncle, stood with his hands in his pockets.
He was looking at me, not the stage.
I turned and walked out through the kitchen.
The next morning I sat at the long table in the breakfast room of the Fitzroy estate.
I'd lived in this house for four years.
I'd picked the linen on the chairs.
Honora sat at the head with her coffee. Brennan sat at her right, scrolling his phone.
The family lawyer slid a thick folder in front of me.
"The prenuptial trust," he said. "Eight million dollars, as the family arranged."
Honora had announced that trust at our engagement party, to a room full of people.
"So generous," everyone had said.
I didn't open the folder.
I didn't ask a single question.
"Neve," Brennan said, without looking up. "Let's not make this a whole thing."
The lawyer cleared his throat and laid a second document on top of the folder.
It was a waiver.
I was giving up all eight million.
Honora set her cup down. "We assumed you'd want to be reasonable."
I picked up the lawyer's pen.
I signed my name at the bottom.
Then I slid off my engagement ring.
It came off easily. I'd lost weight since March, and nobody had noticed.
I set it on the corner of the page.
Brennan finally looked up.
"You don't have to be dramatic," he said.
I pulled the waiver back toward me and wrote under my signature, in clear block letters.
I will move out of the estate today, and from this moment on, I will have nothing more to do with this family.
I signed it again.
The lawyer read it upside down and went a little pink.
Honora smiled at her coffee.
"Have someone count the silver before she goes," she told the air.
I went up to the guest wing and packed one suitcase.
My clothes from before. My laptop. My mother's old drafting pencils.
I left the dresses, the pearls, the cashmere, the car keys.
Nobody came up to stop me.
I rolled the suitcase down the long gravel drive in a thin April rain.
My phone buzzed in my coat pocket.
Then again. Then it didn't stop.
I pulled it out at the gate.
Ivy had sent me a link with nine exclamation points.
It was a headline with my face on it, a photo from the gala, my mouth open.
"FITZROY HEIR'S EX DEMANDED $8 MILLION TO GO QUIETLY."
I looked up.
The iron gate was swinging open.
On the other side, twenty cameras turned toward me at once.
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