I Told the Mob Boss I Would Not Be Bought, So He Offered to Be Sold novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: The Gate

Anson's POV

I sat in the sedan at the end of her gate for two nights.

I did not touch the chain.

I had held three keys to that barn once, and she had taken them back, and I had no business with the gate that was not hers to give.

The first night I watched the office light go out at one in the morning.

The second night it did not go on at all.

She was not in the barn.

She was somewhere in the dark thinking about what I had said in her yard, and I had earned every minute of it.

On the second morning my phone rang at six.

"The notice went out," said the man at the lawyer's office in Mount Pleasant. "She has it."

"Is the bid in my name?" I said.

"Yes, sir."

"Leave it there."

"Mr. Gaillard, the bid is a risk," he said. "If no one else comes, you're the buyer of her building at a sheriff's sale."

"I know what she'll think," I said.

"Then why?"

"It keeps the barn out of the judge's hands for thirty days," I said. "Every Pelham in that courthouse has to walk past a Gaillard bid to get to it."

"And then?"

"Then it's hers," I said.

"I'll sign it over the minute the sale closes, in front of her and the bailiff and the whole room."

"Yes, sir," he said.

He sounded like a man with no idea what to say to me.

Nobody ever had.

I put the phone on the dash.

I had told myself for fourteen months that I was paying for her peace.

It was a lie, and I had known it since the night she put a card on a brass rail and said *paddle number*.

I had not been buying her peace.

I had been buying the right to stay in her room, and I had wanted to be in it.

At nine I drove to the Cooper River.

The men were in the yard in their canvas jackets, forty of them.

I had sent word at five, and the day crew and the night crew had both come.

← Chapter 14 · All chapters · Chapter 16 →

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