He Kept the Firm, So I Booked His Engagement Dinner novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: The Debt I Meant

I signed for the retainer at five o'clock, with Tobias's assistant watching me do it.

At nine that night I was standing outside his apartment door with the guarantee still in my head and nowhere else to put it.

He opened the door in a grey T-shirt, barefoot, with a dish towel over his shoulder.

"You didn't call," he said.

"I'm not here about the hotel."

He stepped back and let me in.

The kitchen smelled of butter and burnt toast. A pan sat on the stove with something yellow and ruined in it.

"Eggs," Tobias said. "I'm practicing."

"You've failed."

"Thoroughly." He turned off the burner. "Tell me."

I told him about the guarantee, the lease and the building, and the stack of yellow-tabbed pages on my kitchen table.

He listened with his arms crossed and his jaw tight, and he did not interrupt once.

"I had my accountant look at ML Holdings on Saturday," he said when I finished. "I was going to tell you tomorrow."

"Tell me now."

"Eight hundred thousand of your money reached the firm. It left again that same month, and it went to ML Holdings as the down payment on that building." He held my eyes. "The other four hundred thousand never reached the firm at all. It went straight to her."

"All of it."

"All of it. Then the firm paid her rent for four years, and you stood behind the rent."

I laughed, because there was nothing else to do with it.

"She took my father's money three times," I said. "As a gift, as a down payment and as rent."

← Chapter 13 · All chapters · Chapter 15 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend