My Husband Bought His Mistress Our Downstairs Apartment novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: One Dull Knife

The morning after the steakhouse, my debit card was declined at the corner deli.

I tried it twice.

Then I called the bank, and a polite voice told me the joint account had been closed by the primary holder.

The primary holder was Dexter.

I stood on the sidewalk with a cup of coffee I couldn't pay for and my face burning.

The deli owner waved me off. "Next time," he said.

I walked back to Bree's with my hands in my pockets.

At seven the next morning, someone knocked on the bakery's back door.

Bree opened it with flour to her elbows.

Quinton stood on the step with a cardboard tray of coffees.

He wore a dark overcoat, and he looked entirely out of place among the sacks.

"I brought oat milk," he said.

Bree took the tray and looked at it.

Then she looked at me over her shoulder.

"Marry him for real," she said.

"Bree."

"I'm only saying the man knows oat milk."

Quinton set a slim black card on the counter between us.

It had my name printed on it, Linnea Winterton, and nothing else.

"It's yours," he said. "Your account, your limit. The bank sends the statement to you, not me."

"I said I keep my own money."

"This is the money you keep."

I turned the card over.

"It's a lot of zeros," I said.

"Dexter closed your joint account to make you crawl. This was cheaper than a lawyer."

"I don't want to owe you."

"You won't. Think of it as the cost of the performance."

He said it as if it were obvious.

Maybe it was.

"My stepmother moved Thursday's dinner to next Tuesday," he said. "She also expects you to move in with me. She thinks an engaged couple lives in one place. My building has a guest suite with its own door and its own lock."

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