My Husband Used My Fortune to Support His Mistress novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The 8:15 Dinner
At the anniversary dinner Hannah lets her husband lecture her about family while the clock ticks to 8:15, then freezes every account and his card declines in front of everyone. Bryce tells her to ask Eli what her father did.
On our sixth anniversary my husband raised a glass of my wine and thanked the woman who ran his gallery.
He had pulled out my chair for me first, and filled my water glass, and kissed my cheek.
"To Camille," Bryce said, standing at the far end of the table. "Who keeps the gallery alive."
Camille smiled and touched the brooch on her shoulder.
It was a pearl and sapphire brooch.
It was my mother's.
I sat at the head of the table in the private dining room on the top floor of my own hotel, my back straight and my hands folded.
There were eight of us.
Bryce's mother, two of his investors, the gallery's accountant, Camille, Bryce, me, and one empty chair that my father's lawyer had promised to fill and hadn't.
Behind me, on the wall, hung the portrait of my father.
Bryce had taken the seat with his back to it, as he always did.
In six years I had never heard him say my father's name.
"Family is everything," Bryce said, sitting down. He smiled down the table at me. "You understand that, don't you, Hannah?"
"I understand family very well," I said.
He nodded, pleased, and took my calm for surrender.
He always did.
Joan, his mother, leaned over and patted my wrist.
She had brought a thermos of her chicken soup up in the service elevator, because she said hotel food never agreed with her.
"You look tired, honey," she said. "Eat something."
"I will."
"And while everyone's here." She slid a thin folder across the tablecloth toward me. "It's just a formality. Bryce's lender wants a guarantee on the gallery's new space. Your name, right here."
Her thumb rested on a yellow tab.
"It's four million," Bryce said lightly. "It's nothing, for you."
"It's nothing," Camille agreed. "Honestly, darling, you'd be doing us such a favor."
She had called me darling since the day she was hired.
The accountant looked at his plate.
I looked at the folder.
I looked at the pen Joan had already uncapped for me.
The brass clock in the lobby is audible from this room when the elevator doors are open, and they were open now, because the waiter had just left.
It was ticking toward eight-fifteen.
I knew exactly what eight-fifteen meant.
For eleven months I had sat at tables like this one and watched money leave my accounts.
Eleven point four million dollars, through the power of attorney I had signed the week we buried my father.
Into the gallery.
Into the loan on Camille's apartment on Hudson Street.
Into a country club membership for Bryce's mother, and a boat I had never seen.
I let every small thing land and settle.
The empty chair.
The folder.
Bryce's hand on the back of Camille's chair when he thought no one was looking.
Joan's soft voice telling me to eat.
I checked my watch once, briefly, and smiled at Bryce as if I hadn't heard a word he'd said.
"More wine?" I asked.
"Please," he said, and held out his glass.
I poured it myself.
At eight-fifteen exactly, his phone buzzed on the tablecloth.
Then Camille's.
Then the accountant's, and both investors', in a ripple around the table.
Bryce frowned at his screen.
"That's strange. My bank says there's a hold on the gallery account."
"Mine too," Camille said. Her smile slipped. "All of them."
"I'll call them," Bryce said, and reached for his wallet to find the number on the back of his card.
The waiter came back with the dessert cart and a card reader, because Bryce always insisted on settling the bill himself for show.
Bryce slid his black card across.
The machine whirred.
"I'm sorry, sir," the waiter said quietly. "It's been declined."
"Try it again."
The waiter tried it again.
"Declined."
Bryce laughed, once, and put the card away.
"Hannah," he said, still pleasant. "Would you tell me what's going on?"
I closed the folder on the table and set the uncapped pen on top of it.
"So I stopped being your bank," I said.
Nobody moved.
"Every account with my name on it is frozen as of eight-fifteen. The power of attorney is revoked. The gallery has until Friday to be out of my building."
Joan's hand slid off my wrist.
"Honey, that's not funny."
"No," I said. "It isn't."
The elevator opened behind me.
Eli Brennan, my father's lawyer and the trustee of his estate, walked in with two bank officers and a leather folder under his arm.
"I apologize for being late," he said.
He looked at the folder, and then at me.
I nodded.
Bryce stood up so quickly his chair went over.
For the first time in six years, his voice was not warm at all.
"You think you're punishing me," he said. "You don't know what your father did to my family."
He pointed at Eli.
"Go ahead. Ask him."
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend