My Husband's Brother Owns My Secret novel · Chapter 14 of 32

Chapter 14: The Study

Graydon didn't come toward me.

He leaned back against the door with his hands in his pockets.

"That's the bank's property," he said.

"It's your mother's desk."

"Same thing. It always has been."

My phone was in the pocket of Fran's dress.

I put my hand in my pocket like I was hiding it from him.

I pressed the side button twice, the way Fran had shown me in the truck.

The little red dot came on against my thigh.

"Close the binder, Neve."

I didn't close it.

"You came all this way for a turkey," I said. "You could have just stayed at the table."

"I came to talk to my wife."

"Your wife is getting divorced."

"She doesn't have to."

He took his hands out of his pockets and crossed to the window.

Beatrice kept a decanter there on a silver tray.

He poured two fingers of Scotch and didn't offer me any.

"Here's what I'm offering," he said, with his back to me. "Come home. Tonight. Ride back with me and Mother."

While he poured, I folded the wire page out of the binder along its edge.

"You withdraw the filing," he said. "We never talk about the painting again. It stays in its crate in storage until we're both dead."

I folded the page twice.

I slid it down the front of my dress, inside my bra, against my skin.

"And Hutch?"

He turned around with the glass.

"The note on his alley disappears. He keeps his little bowling family. Nobody gets hurt."

"And if I don't come home?"

He smiled.

"Then I call his note on January twelfth and sell his lanes for parking. Then I take you to court with Section fourteen and a picture of you naked, and you leave the marriage with your sister's dress."

"You'd really do all of that."

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