Swapped My Ex for His Billionaire Uncle novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Pen
Pamela refuses to sign her ex's paper in front of his mother, and his billionaire uncle asks her to dinner. Colin says he will never sign the divorce.
Colin slid the pen across the table and smiled.
"Page four, Pam," he said. "Sign, and we're all home for dinner."
We were on the thirty-first floor of the Hargreave Tower, in a boardroom with a view of the whole harbor.
His family owned the building, the harbor, and apparently this meeting.
His mother sat at the end of the table in an ivory cashmere set, stirring her tea without drinking it.
Colin's lawyer sat beside him.
My lawyer sat beside me, a tired woman I had paid with a credit card.
I turned to page four and read it slowly.
It said I agreed the marriage ended through my abandonment.
It said the one hundred and eighty thousand dollars I put into Colin's company was a gift.
It said I would take twenty thousand dollars and never speak about the Hargreave family again.
"That money was a loan," I said.
"You wrote 'loan' on a napkin," Colin said. "Napkins aren't contracts."
"You signed the napkin."
"I signed a lot of things I didn't read. You were my wife. I trusted you."
I looked at him.
Three years of marriage, and he had never once said that to me with a straight face.
"Pamela, dear," Lorna said, still stirring. "Be gracious. You've taken enough from this family."
I had taken a toaster, a lamp, and my own last name back.
"That money was my father's life insurance," I said. "He died when I was twenty-two."
"I put every dollar into Colin's app because he cried at my kitchen table and said it would be ours."
"Your father would want you to be reasonable," Colin said gently.
The room went very quiet.
My lawyer touched my sleeve.
I didn't need her to tell me not to answer that.
I picked up the pen.
Colin's smile got wider.
I wrote across page four in capital letters, and pushed the packet back across the table:
NO.
Lorna's spoon stopped.
"I'll see you at the hearing on November fourth," I said. "I'll bring the napkin."
Then I stood up, took my coat off the chair, and walked out.
Nobody followed me.
Behind the glass wall of the boardroom, men in suits had stopped pretending to read their screens.
The hallway smelled like new carpet and money.
My hands were shaking, so I pressed the elevator button twice.
The doors opened, I stepped in, and a large hand caught the doors before they closed.
A man stepped in beside me.
He was tall, with dark hair gone silver at the temples, a charcoal suit, and no tie.
I knew him.
Everybody at every Hargreave Christmas knew him.
Gregory Hargreave, the youngest uncle, the one who ran the company while everybody else was in the photographs.
He pushed the button for the lobby and stood there with his hands in his pockets, looking at the doors.
"You're quiet for someone who just did that," he said.
"I'm saving it for the street."
"That was the best thing I've seen in that room in eleven years."
"You were watching?"
"The wall is glass, Pamela. Your lawyer's tie was crooked, and my nephew's watch is hideous. I saw all of it."
"His watch is hideous," I said.
"It cost sixty thousand dollars. It's still hideous."
I almost laughed, and I hated that I almost laughed.
The floor numbers fell past us, thirty, twenty-nine, twenty-eight.
"Have dinner with me," he said.
I turned my head.
He was still looking at the doors, not at me, perfectly calm.
"You're Colin's uncle."
"His father's youngest brother. Twenty-two years younger. My mother is still surprised."
"Colin's uncle," I said again, more slowly, in case he hadn't heard it the first time.
"I'm aware of the family tree."
"I'm three weeks from a divorce hearing. I'm done with this whole family. Your nephew, your sister-in-law, the Christmas cards, all of it."
"Then it shouldn't take long to say no."
"No."
"Thank you," he said. "I'll ask again Thursday."
"Don't."
"Thursday," he said, and for the first time he looked at me.
His eyes were grey, steady, and not at all sorry.
The doors opened on the lobby.
Colin was already standing outside the elevator.
He had taken the stairs, or the other car, or some shortcut that only the owner's son knew.
He had my scarf in his hand.
I had left it on the chair in the boardroom.
He looked at his uncle, then at me, and smiled with all his teeth.
He leaned in close enough that only I could hear, and he spoke in the voice he used when we were alone.
"Here's what's going to happen, Pam. I don't sign the divorce unless you sign mine."
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