Jilted Wife Returns As A Billionaire Heiress novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: The Parking Garage

The garage under the Drake smelled of oil and cold concrete.

Elsie walked down the ramp at midnight with her hands empty and her coat buttoned to the chin.

Darius had wanted to walk beside her.

She had made him stay at the stairwell on the level above.

His phone was open, with a line already running to a detective.

"If I go in with you," she had said, "he burns them to prove a point."

"If he touches you, I'll be down there in an instant."

"I know."

Trent was waiting on the third level, under a flickering light.

The dented lockbox sat on the hood of a gray sedan.

He had the original note in one hand.

In the other he held a steel lighter.

"You came alone," he said. "Good girl."

"Say what you want."

"I want you to sign this."

He pushed a single typed page across the hood.

It said she released him from the debt of four hundred and ten thousand dollars.

It also said she asked the court to drop her petition against him.

"Sign, and I give you the paper. I turn evidence on Pauline and your friend, I disappear to Phoenix, and you never see my face again."

"And if I don't?"

He thumbed the lighter.

A small flame stood up between them.

"Then I burn the note. And the babies' birth certificates. Do you know how long it takes the county to reissue those? A year, if the father contests."

"You'd contest."

"I'll contest anything I want. I'm the father."

Elsie looked at the flame.

It was shaking a little, because his hand was.

"Burn it," she said.

Trent stared at her.

"You heard me. Burn the note."

"That is four hundred thousand dollars."

"My lawyer filed a certified copy in court three weeks ago," Elsie said. "It's already in the record. You're holding a piece of paper."

Trent's face emptied.

He glanced at the birth certificates in the box.

"And those?"

"The county will reissue them. I'll wait a year if I have to. I waited longer than that for you to say sorry for the ward."

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