Chapter 5: The Invoice

The lobby was full of staff, and every one of them was pretending not to look.

Alden crossed the marble floor toward her.

He walked without the cane touching the ground.

"Lucinda."

"Miss Throckmorton," said the security guard at her elbow, stepping forward.

"It's all right," she said.

She stopped a few feet from him and waited.

His coat was soaked through, and he had not shaved.

"You were on the news," he said. "I thought I'd read it wrong."

"You read it right."

"Marsh isn't your name."

"It was my mother's."

"You lived in my house for three years." His jaw moved. "You slept in my bed. You let me think you had nothing."

"You never asked me one question about myself."

"That isn't an answer."

"It's the only one you earned."

A woman in a cream coat stepped out of the revolving door behind him, shaking rain off her sleeves.

Daphne.

She took in the lobby, the screens, the staff and Lucinda's navy suit, and she slipped her hand through Alden's arm.

"We should go," she said quietly. "This isn't the place."

"You can go," Alden said without looking at her.

He reached into his coat and took out a long white envelope.

Lucinda knew it before he opened it.

It was the envelope from his pillow.

"You left this," he said. "I saw the news and drove straight here. I thought you needed it more than you said."

He held out the check.

Two million dollars, signed and uncashed.

A few people in the lobby stopped pretending.

"I told you I wouldn't need it," Lucinda said.

"Take it. I owe you that much."

Keep reading free with an account. Start Gilded Revenge: The Ex-Wife's Billion-Dollar Empire from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.