The Billionaire's Rescue novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: Tell Her First

Margot lived on the thirty-first floor of a glass building on the Gold Coast, and her doorman had been told not to let me up.

Torben spoke to him for barely a minute.

I never learned what was said.

The doorman went pale, and then he pressed the elevator button for me and wouldn't meet my eyes.

Torben stayed in the car.

"This is yours to do," he said. "I'll be right below."

The elevator opened on a hallway of pale carpet and a single white door.

I knocked before I could lose my nerve.

Margot opened it in grey sweatpants, with her hair in a clip and her face scrubbed raw.

Her phone was ringing somewhere behind her and nobody was answering it.

"I can't do press today," she began. Then she saw me, and her voice changed. "Halley."

"Can I come in? It's not about Lance. Well, it is. But it's mostly not."

She stood aside.

The apartment was all cream furniture and tall windows, with the city laid out below.

There was a ring box open on the coffee table, empty, and the ring sat beside it on a napkin.

She cleared a space on the couch and I sat down very carefully.

She didn't.

She stood in the middle of the room with her arms folded, and I understood she was bracing for me to say something cruel.

"I'm going to say it fast," I said. "And then I'm going to give you a piece of paper. And you can throw me out."

"All right."

"My mother worked nights at St. Anne's. Twenty-six years ago she switched the wristbands on two babies."

Margot didn't move.

I made myself say the rest.

"I'm the baby from the private suite, Margot. You're the one she gave up."

The room was very quiet.

A siren went by thirty floors down, small and far.

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