The System Admitted Its Mistake, So I Offered Him a Divorce novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: Day Eight

The picture ran on the Friday morning news sites.

It was a still from the footage, enlarged and sharpened, with my face looking up into the camera.

BILLIONAIRE'S BRIDE ON THE RIG LADDER.

There were nine reporters in the lobby of Rafe's building when we came down.

"Mrs. Holloway! Did you rig the stage?"

"Mrs. Holloway! Is the marriage real?"

Rafe stepped in front of me and I stepped around him.

"The woman in that picture is not me," I said. "Ask the person who gave it to you why it arrived at seven this morning, before the hospital had even finished its review."

"Who gave it to us?"

"Ask your editor."

I walked through them with my chin up, and a man at the back said "Pharmacist, huh," and wrote it down.

The chair of the Holloway Group board lived in a brick house at the edge of the old campus, with a garden full of rose canes cut back for winter.

He was seventy-one, a retired surgeon, and he also chaired the board at Mercy General.

He was on his knees in the dirt when I came through the gate alone.

Rafe waited in the car at the curb, because I had asked him to.

"Mrs. Holloway," the surgeon said, and did not get up. "I voted for the clause. I'll vote for the vote on Tuesday. If you came here to lean on me, save your breath."

"I didn't come to lean."

I crouched in the dirt beside him.

"Jarrett pledged two hundred and sixty thousand dollars to the children's wing at the donor dinner, in front of three hundred people. The hospital's terms gave him seven days to wire it."

He looked up.

"Today is day eight. Your finance office says no wire has come."

"Jarrett is a slow payer."

"Jarrett is a man who stands in front of a microphone for a camera and doesn't send the money. Every family charity he chairs, check the pledge dates."

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