My Sister Stole My Billionaire Husband novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Toast
At her husband's company gala Tavi is called to the stage for a toast, and Reuben instead ends their marriage and presents her sister Gwen, wearing Tavi's grandmother's ring, as the mother of his child; Tavi's own mother tells her to be gracious.
My husband's assistant found me by the coat check and said I was on in four minutes.
I was holding the toast I had written for him on a cream card.
Hallam Group was fifteen years old tonight, and three hundred people in black tie had come to say so.
I had done his flowers for the whole room, white peonies on every table, because he liked how they photographed.
I wore the green silk I bought with my own money from the shop.
On my right hand was my grandmother's sapphire ring, the only thing I owned that Reuben had never paid for.
"Mrs. Hallam, he asked for you by name," the assistant said, and she wouldn't look at me.
I should have known then.
Reuben was standing at the podium under a ten-foot screen with his own face on it.
He was thirty-four, tanned, and at ease with every camera in the room.
"Before I thank anyone," he said, "I want to tell the truth about my life."
The room went quiet, the good kind.
I smiled up at him with my card in my hand.
"Four years ago I married a kind woman who made my home beautiful," he said. "I owe her more than I can say."
Owe.
Not love.
My smile stayed where it was, but it stopped being mine.
"But I won't lie to the people who built this company with me. My marriage has been over for a long time."
Someone near the front said "oh" very softly.
He held out his hand toward the side of the stage.
My sister walked out.
Gwen was twenty-seven and wore white, a long white column dress.
She had her hand on her stomach.
She had my grandmother's sapphire ring on her finger.
I looked down at my right hand.
Mine was gone.
Somewhere in the last four minutes, in the crush by the coat check, someone had slid it off me and I hadn't felt it.
It was a very good trick, and I knew whose it was.
Gwen had done it to me with a prom dress when I was seventeen.
"Gwendolyn is eleven weeks pregnant with my child," Reuben said.
"I'm not going to hide her in a back room. She deserves the front of the house."
The room clapped.
I will remember that for the rest of my life.
Three hundred people in tuxedos and gowns, men who had eaten at my table, and they clapped.
A woman in the second row cried happy tears into her napkin.
Only two people in that room were not clapping.
Winnie stood by the kitchen doors with her arms full of empty vases and her mouth open.
And at table one, Alistair Crowe, Reuben's biggest rival, sat with his hands flat on the cloth, looking at me.
Gwen looked down at the crowd, shy and glowing, and then she looked straight at me.
She smiled.
It was the same smile she wore at eight, holding my doll.
I walked up the center aisle.
The clapping died in pieces as I passed each table.
I climbed the three steps and stopped in front of Reuben.
He thought I'd cry.
I could see it in his face, the patient look of a man waiting for the scene he'd already planned a reaction to.
I took my wedding band off, the plain gold one, and held it over the champagne flute in his hand.
"You owe me a lot," I said. "Here's the first payment."
I dropped it in.
It made a small, sweet sound.
Then I turned to the room and put my toast card on the podium, face down.
"The flowers are mine," I said into the microphone. "Four hundred stems of peonies."
"If you want to clap for something, clap for them. They're the only honest things in this room."
Nobody moved.
Reuben leaned in to the mic, still smiling for the cameras, and spoke very low.
"Your key card stops working at midnight, Tavi. The shop's lease is on Hallam property, so that stops too. Go home to your mother."
My mother was already coming up the steps.
Dorothea Lasker, fifty-eight, in her good pearls, who had told me all week she was so proud of me.
She walked past me without a glance and took Gwen's arm.
"Octavia," she said, quiet enough that only the front tables could hear.
"You never could hold a man. Gwen was kind enough to try. Be gracious."
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