Spoiled by Four Billionaires novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Graduation Gift
Nessa reads aloud what she paid for Dean's degree, takes back her watch and drops his envelope in the champagne, and a stranger sees her locket.
I came straight from my shift with a gift box in my apron pocket.
The party was on the roof of a glass tower in the Seaport, forty floors above my diner.
I still wore my uniform and my orthopedic shoes.
Inside the box was a steel watch with a blue face.
It had taken me seven months of extra Sunday doubles to pay for it.
Dean was at the center of the roof, laughing, with a champagne flute in his hand.
He had graduated that morning, and I had been in the third row, clapping until my palms stung.
His shirt was new and his hair was cut by someone who charged more than my rent.
"Dean," I called, and held up the box.
He saw me, and his face went careful.
A silver-haired man tapped a glass for attention.
He was the managing partner of the firm that had just hired Dean.
"To Dean Ketterman," he said, "and to my daughter, who is about to become his wife."
The roof cheered.
A young woman in a white dress kissed Dean on the mouth.
I stood there with the box in my hand.
Four years of my life had just been announced to forty strangers as someone else's.
Dean walked over, took my elbow, and steered me toward a planter of white roses.
"Nessa, not here," he said quietly.
"You told me you were working tonight," I said.
"I am working. This is the work."
"You said you'd marry me when you graduated."
He sighed.
"I said a lot of things when I was broke."
Then he took an envelope from his jacket and pushed it into my hands.
"There's three thousand in there. Take it and go home."
I opened the flap with my thumb.
The bills were crisp and new.
"Three thousand," I said.
"It's generous, honestly."
"I paid your tuition for four years."
"And I appreciate that."
"I paid your rent, your books, your laptop, and the suit you were wearing the day you met her."
His jaw tightened.
He glanced behind him, where the guests had begun to turn.
"Lower your voice."
I didn't.
"Sixty-one thousand, four hundred dollars," I said, loud enough to carry.
The partner stopped talking.
The young woman in white lowered her glass.
"Every dollar from my tips and my doubles," I said. "Every receipt is in a shoebox under my bed."
Dean's face went red from the collar up.
"You're making a scene," he hissed. "You were never anything but a stepping stone, Nessa. I outgrew you."
A woman near the bar gasped.
Somebody laughed and covered it with a cough.
I felt something go very quiet inside me.
It wasn't crying, and it wasn't shaking.
It was the feeling of a tab being closed.
I reached out and took his left wrist.
He was already wearing a watch, a cheap digital one I had bought him in his freshman year.
I unbuckled it, slid it off, and dropped it into my apron.
"That's mine," I said.
Then I pulled the new watch from the gift box and read the engraving on the back out loud.
"To the man I believe in. N."
I tossed the steel watch into the nearest champagne tower.
It hit the glass with a bright crack, and bubbles poured down the pyramid onto the floor.
The envelope went in after it, three thousand dollars folded in half, sinking in the foam.
"Keep the change," I said.
No one on that roof said a word.
I walked to the elevator with my head up, because the one thing the diner teaches you is how to carry a full tray through a hostile room.
The doors closed on Dean's red face.
I made it to the lobby before my hands started shaking.
The night air outside smelled like salt and bus exhaust.
I stood at the curb beside a row of black cars, trying to remember which bus went to Dorchester.
"Excuse me," said a man behind me.
He was tall, in a gray suit, with a rower's shoulders and a face.
I stepped back.
"I'm not looking for anything," I said. "It's been a night."
"I saw what you did upstairs," he said. "I was at the bar."
"Then you saw enough."
"No." His voice dropped. "I need to see your necklace."
My hand went to my collar before I could stop it.
The little silver locket lay against my skin, warm from my body.
I had worn it since I was five, since the wharf and the cold and the woman who found me.
He stepped closer and tilted it under the streetlight.
His hand was not quite steady.
He turned it over and looked at the tiny letter engraved on the back.
An "A", worn almost smooth.
All the color left his face.
"Where did you get this?" he said.
"It's mine. It was always mine."
He closed his eyes for a second.
"My sister wore that locket the day she disappeared," he said. "We buried its twin in an empty coffin."
"Then you're mistaken."
"I don't think so." His eyes were wet. "She was five, and her name was Vanessa."
The woman who raised me said Nessa was the only name I would answer to when she found me.
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