My Fiancé Chose My Brother, So I Chose My Brother's Best Friend novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: Managed

I found my mother in the service corridor behind the ballroom, standing at a tray of dirty glasses.

She had not gone to the exit.

She had gone to the quiet place, the way she always did at the end of a party, to straighten something that didn't need straightening.

"Mom."

She didn't turn around.

"You made a scene," she said.

"Teddy made it."

"You let him."

"He's twenty-three and he asked me to stand next to him. I stood next to him."

Her hands moved a glass a quarter of an inch.

I opened the grey folder and held up the last page.

"You signed this in June," I said.

She looked at the page for a long time.

"I know what I signed."

"A month before Hugh asked me to initial anything."

"Yes."

"You knew he'd sold my quarter."

"I knew."

"And you told me to marry Spencer."

"Estelle."

"Twenty minutes before the vows, you told me to my face that I would walk down that aisle."

"Yes."

"Why?"

She turned around at last.

For the first time in my life she looked her age.

"Because I had already signed," she said.

The words sat between us.

"Your father left us fourteen million dollars of debt and a name on a door," she said. "Hugh came to me in June and said the firm would be gone in a year without the Lyles. He said you'd be married into the family and none of it would ever matter. He said you'd never need to know."

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