Chapter 10: The Night

Jillian's POV

I was halfway up the stairs when I heard the guard say her name.

I came back down in Jonas's shirt, with my arms crossed over my chest, and stopped on the landing.

Diane Tourneur stood in the hall.

She wore her gala gown under a camel coat, and her pearls had been put on crooked.

Her makeup had run, and she had not fixed it.

She looked frantic and disheveled, as if she had driven here in a daze.

Jonas stood across from her with his hands in his pockets.

He did not offer her a chair.

"Mrs. Tourneur," he said. "It's two in the morning."

"I know." Her voice shook. "I'm sorry. I won't stay."

Her eyes slid to me, and her face changed.

"Jillian. Thank God. I'd hoped you'd be awake."

"Why?"

She opened her bag and took out a thick cream envelope.

"This is for you," she said. "It's a hundred thousand dollars."

I did not move.

"I'm not asking you to forgive Brett," she said quickly. "I'm only asking you to go."

"Go where?"

"Anywhere warm. Brett will fall apart for a while, and then he'll recover. You're young, and you'll start over."

"You want me to leave my husband."

"He isn't who you think he is."

She glanced at Jonas, and then quickly away from him.

"You don't know what you've married."

"I know exactly what I married."

"Jillian, please." Her eyes filled. "I am begging you. For all of us."

Jonas had not said a word.

He watched Diane and said nothing, and his face gave me nothing.

I came down the last three steps and held out my hand.

For a second she thought I would take the envelope.

I took it from her, turned it over once, and put it back in her bag.

"I don't take money from your family," I said.

"Brett took four years of my life. Kelsey took my watch. Neither of them has ever paid me back."

"She is not his girlfriend," Diane said.

"Then I don't know what she is, and neither do you."

Diane's face went white and then red.

"You will regret this," she whispered.

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