The 23rd Deletion Bride novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: Paragraph Four

The atrium made a sound I had never heard three hundred people make.

Dalton let out his breath and stood straighter on the stage.

He thought he had won.

"Thank you," he said to the man in the gray suit. "Officers, please see my wife back to her car."

"May I read it first?" I said.

The man in the gray suit hesitated.

"It's a court order, ma'am. It's served when you take it."

"Then I'll take it."

I held out my hand, and he put the envelope in it.

Cullen's hand came to rest on the back of my chair.

I noticed it there, and I did not look at it.

My father had told me never to sign what I hadn't read, and I had no plan to start reading less.

I slid out the first page.

It said I was unstable, and under medical supervision, and unable to understand the fund's affairs.

Behind it was a second document, thick, stapled, with Dalton's signature at the bottom.

"That is a sworn statement," I said. "Does anyone mind if I read my husband's words?"

Nobody answered.

Dalton laughed once. "Linnea, you're embarrassing yourself."

I turned to the page with the numbers down the margin.

"Paragraph four," I said, and I read it out in my ordinary voice.

"Petitioner learned in March of this year that his wife's late father controlled the Anchor Fund."

"Petitioner chose not to tell his wife, because he judged her too fragile to hear it."

A woman on the first balcony said, "Oh, no."

"Paragraph five. Petitioner has known of the fund's ownership for eight months and has acted in his wife's best interest throughout."

I looked up.

"You swore to a court that you hid my father's will from me," I said. "On paper. With your name under it."

"That is taken out of context," Dalton said.

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