My Billionaire Brother Destroyed My Cheating Ex Husband novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Mom's Piano

Rochelle returns to the house with Elias and movers. Arlene has moved in, Poppy wears her robe, and Chad arrives with a cameraman. When he sneers that her brother never picks up, she says Alasdair answered on the first ring and Chad turns gray.

The next morning at nine I stood on my own front porch and rang the bell.

I had a key. I didn't use it.

Behind me in the driveway, a Holloway Freight truck idled with two movers in the cab, and Elias leaned on its fender with a coffee.

"I'll stay out here until you want me," he said.

"Come in," I said. "I want a witness."

He put the coffee on the hood and followed me up the steps.

Arlene opened the door in her good cardigan, holding a dish towel.

The front hall smelled like bacon, and her suitcase stood against the wall.

"Rochelle," she said. "I'm so glad you came to apologize."

"I came for my mother's piano."

Her smile didn't change. "Chad is at the office, dear. We'll sort out the furniture when he's home."

"Then I'll wait in the living room with it."

I walked past her.

Poppy stood in the kitchen doorway in my white bathrobe, the one with my initial on the pocket.

Her hair was wet, and she was holding a spatula.

"Baby made pancakes," she said in the little voice. "Baby thought you might be hungry."

I looked at the robe.

Then I looked at her face, and it was perfectly soft and kind.

"Take it off before I leave," I said. "It's mine."

"Rochelle!" Arlene said. "She's been through enough."

I didn't answer. I took my phone out and called the movers.

They came in carrying blankets and straps.

The piano stood against the living room wall where it had always stood, an upright with a cracked leg and a water ring on the lid from the day my mother fell asleep with a teacup on it.

I'd learned "Heart and Soul" on that bench.

Arlene moved to block the hallway.

"You can't take that. It's marital property."

"It was in our apartment before I met your son."

"Chad!" she called toward her phone, already dialing. "She's here with a truck!"

One of the movers asked where to start.

"The lid first," I said.

By the time they had it wrapped, the neighbors had gathered on the lawn.

The man from next door was watering a hedge that did not need water.

A black BMW pulled into the driveway and Chad got out.

He wore the gray suit I had picked for him, and he walked up his own front path slowly.

Behind him came the project manager who had filmed the dinner, holding his phone up at shoulder height.

"Mar," Chad said, with a sad little shake of his head. "Look at you. Look what you're doing to Mom."

"Hello, Chad."

"I want everyone to see this," he told the lawn. "I've been patient for days. She humiliated a young girl, and now she's stripping our house."

"The piano is mine."

"Your name isn't on anything in this house." He said it gently. "Page fourteen of the prenup. Everything you walked in with became mine when we married. You signed it yourself."

I had never signed a prenup.

I stared at him.

"You signed everything I put in front of you," he said, so softly that only I, and the camera at his shoulder, could hear it. "You always did."

Elias took a step toward me and stopped.

I turned to the movers.

"Take the piano," I said. "If he wants to call the police, they can explain to him why a woman can't carry out her dead mother's piano."

The movers got their straps under it and lifted.

The lawn went quiet.

Poppy came out onto the porch with the robe still on, one hand pressed to her chest.

"Baby doesn't want anyone to fight," she said.

Nobody on the lawn said a word to her.

Chad kept filming my face and let the piano go.

"Fine," he said. "Take it. It's old junk anyway."

He lowered his voice, and his smile came back.

"You know what this costs you, Rochelle. Everything you have is a card in my name and a brother who's never answered you once."

"He answered," I said. "On the first ring."

Chad's smile stopped moving.

He looked past me at the Holloway Freight truck, and then at Elias.

The color went out of his face.

"What did he say to you?" he asked.

It was not the voice he used for cameras.

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