My Mother Called Me Fake, So Six Brothers Came for Me novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Man Who Owns the Building

At the hotel loading dock, building owner Lawson Bexley hands back her box and proposes; she refuses, and Genevieve has security throw her out.

"Sit down," Brendan said.

"Nobody reads a statement at my sister in my sister's own kitchen."

"It's not my kitchen," I said, "and I need my things."

My laptop, my winter boots, the framed seating chart from the first wedding I ever ran.

Three years of a life, in a locker on the third floor of a hotel that had just thrown me out.

"We'll get them," said the twin who talked.

"I'll go in the front door with a hand truck."

"If six men walk into the Embarcadero, the story is brothers in the lobby," I said.

"Then she's the wronged mother and I'm the girl with an army."

Brendan opened his mouth and shut it again.

"I'll go to the loading dock alone," I said.

"You can wait in the alley."

The second brother was the one who nodded, looking at his watch.

"Twenty minutes," he said.

"Then we come in."

The loading dock of the Radcliffe Embarcadero smelled of wet cardboard and fryer oil.

I had crossed it a thousand times with a clipboard.

Now a security guard I had once covered a double shift for stood in the open bay with his arms folded.

"Ms. Radcliffe," he said, and winced.

"I'm sorry, but Mrs. Radcliffe says nothing leaves the building."

"It's a box of socks," I said.

His eyes slid past me, over my shoulder.

"I'll take it from here," said a voice behind me.

I turned.

Lawson Bexley stood at the foot of the ramp in a charcoal coat, holding a cardboard banker's box against his chest.

He was a tall man with gray at his temples and the face of a person who had never once been late.

The guard stepped aside.

My name was written on the box in neat block capitals.

LUCY, it said, crossed out, and under it, in another pen, a question mark.

"Your staff packed it at midnight," Lawson said.

"I told them to take whatever you would want and not to ask me first."

He set it in my arms.

My boots were on top.

"Thank you, Mr. Bexley," I said.

"Why are you here?"

"I own the building," he said.

"You always own the building."

"Yes," he said.

He looked at me, then straightened a corner of the box lid that didn't need it.

"What should I call you?" he asked.

"Ms. Radcliffe doesn't seem right."

"Nuala," I said, and it was the third time I had ever said it aloud.

"Nuala," he repeated, testing it.

"Marry me."

I laughed, a short cough of a laugh, and he did not move.

He stood with his hands at his sides, waiting.

"You're serious," I said.

"I have eleven houses, and I use one," he said flatly.

"None of the others have you in them, so you would pick the one with the best light."

He did not blink.

"Mr. Bexley," I said.

"I wouldn't ask anything of you."

"It would be a solid door and a name no one can take off you at a party."

"I've been poor for six hours," I said.

"I'm not going to marry the first man who is kind to me during it."

"Then I'll ask again when you aren't poor."

"That's worse," I said.

"It might be."

He didn't smile, but something near his mouth shifted.

I looked at him and remembered a corridor.

Last March outside the east ballroom, my mother had told me in her softest voice that I carried myself like a coat rack.

At the far end of the hall, a tall man with a leather folder had stopped, looked at us, and gone back through the fire door.

I had not forgotten it.

I had never said so, either.

"What?" he asked.

"Nothing," I said.

"Thank you for the box."

The service door banged open behind him.

Genevieve Radcliffe came down the ramp in her cream coat with two guards at her heels and my pearls back around her throat.

Hers now, I thought.

"Lucy, darling," she said sweetly.

"I told you we'd send your things, and you are trespassing."

"Please remove her."

"Don't," Lawson said.

It was low and perfectly clear.

The guard took a step toward me anyway.

"I can walk," I said.

I shifted the box onto my hip, looked my mother in her tearful, gentle face, and went down the ramp on my own two feet.

She followed me to the curb with her voice pitched too low for the guards.

"Come back by Friday and I will find you somewhere to stay," she said.

"Nobody wants you but me."

Behind her, at the mouth of the alley, two black SUVs sat idling.

Six doors opened at once.

← Chapter 2 · All chapters · Chapter 4 →

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