My Fiancé Let Her Ruin Our Wedding but Insisted It Was Just a Joke novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: The Safe Plan

The meeting was in the glass conference room on the top floor of Hallett Hotels, with the whole open office outside the walls.

I sat at the far end of the table.

Tobias had asked if I would, in the car, and I had said yes before he finished the sentence.

Across from us sat a lawyer in a very good suit, and beside him, in a navy blazer with a clean shave, sat Conor.

Conor smiled at me.

I looked at the wall behind his head.

"Mr. Hallett," said the lawyer. "My client regrets the events of the past weeks."

"Does he."

"He is prepared to resign today, effective at once, with no severance. He will return the company's honeymoon charges out of his own pocket. He will sign a public apology for the wedding."

"That's generous."

"In return, there is only one condition." The lawyer slid a folder across the table. "The gala goes ahead without any statement from a third party. Mr. Hallett's sister does not speak. My client's friend Mr. Braddock removes the clinic video and every other file in his possession. Nothing that happened eleven years ago is mentioned again by anyone."

He turned a page for emphasis.

"Your sister keeps her privacy," he said. "Nobody puts her on a stage. Nobody films her face. It is, I think, a kindness."

I watched Tobias read the folder.

He read it slowly, all four pages.

His hand did not move on the paper.

I knew that stillness.

It was the stillness of a man who wants to say yes.

"May I have a moment with Ms. Bradfield?" he said.

"Of course."

The lawyer and Conor went out to the corridor, and Conor looked back once through the glass.

Tobias did not speak for a moment.

"I want to sign it," he said at last.

"I know."

"I want to sign it so much that my hand is shaking. It would end today. She would never stand in front of three hundred people with a cane and four pages she can barely read aloud. Nobody would film her. Conor would be gone, and I would sit in my own gala and drink a glass of wine."

"I know," I said again.

"I was going to tell you in the car, and I couldn't."

"You're telling me now."

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