My Twin Took My Husband. I Kept the Billions. novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Forty Floors
Hallie wakes in her father's living room as her twin runs to her husband, signs the other contract in front of everyone, and hears one whispered line that proves Reese remembers.
My twin sister shoved me off the top of the tower I built.
I fell the whole way down with her laugh following me.
Then I opened my eyes in my father's living room.
There was a fire in the fireplace and the smell of cedar and old coffee.
I was sitting in the leather chair by the window, and my hands were twenty-four years old.
Two men stood in front of the fire.
Two marriage contracts lay on the coffee table, face down.
And my twin sister was already beside me, pressing a glass of water into my hand.
"You're white as paper, Hal," she said, and she squeezed my fingers. "Drink that."
Then she turned and ran across the room toward my husband.
"It's you!" She flung herself at him and locked her arms around his neck. "I'm marrying you."
Wayne Bachelder froze.
He wore a canvas work jacket with the sleeves pushed up and an oil stain on one cuff.
He had come straight from his garage, and his hands hung open at his sides, because he didn't know where to put them.
I had seen that exact moment ten years ago, in this same room, in this same jacket.
The first time, Reese had never touched him.
The first time, she had stood by the piano and cried that she wanted the other one.
My father, Marshall Vanderberg, cleared his throat. "Reese, sweetheart. You haven't read the terms."
"I don't need to." She didn't let go of Wayne. "I like him."
She had never met him.
She hadn't looked at the contracts, and she hadn't looked at the other man either.
The other man stood by the bookshelves in a dark grey suit, with a thin steel watch on his wrist.
Giles Livingston.
He held a phone in his hand, and the screen was black.
He wasn't scrolling.
He was looking at me.
He had been looking at me since the second I opened my eyes.
My father followed my sister's choice with a worried frown and then turned to me.
"Hallie. That leaves you the Livingston contract. You don't have to decide this minute."
I did, though.
I had a bank account in my head with ten years of numbers in it, and none of them could be spent from this chair.
Last time, I had taken the man with grease on his hands, and I had built him into someone the whole city knew.
I got up from the chair.
My knees were steady. They hadn't been steady in a long time.
"Papa, give me a pen."
My father blinked and then took the fountain pen from his breast pocket.
I walked to the coffee table and turned over the second contract.
Livingston Capital would buy a controlling share of Vanderberg Hotels and keep my father's name on the door.
In return, one Vanderberg daughter would be Giles Livingston's wife for two years.
I read the terms in under a minute.
I had read worse across a table with men who wanted my land.
"Miss Vanderberg," Giles said.
He had a low, level voice.
It was the first thing he'd said since I woke up.
"There's a line on page three that you may want to look at before you sign."
"I saw it," I said. "Separate bedrooms."
"Yes."
"Fine."
I uncapped the pen and wrote at the bottom of page four, in my own hand, one sentence.
Everything Hallie Vanderberg earns during the marriage belongs to Hallie Vanderberg.
Then I signed my name under it.
My father stared at the page. "Hallie, that's not part of the agreement."
"It is now." I held the pen out to Giles. "Or you can find another daughter."
Reese made a small sound against Wayne's shoulder.
Giles Livingston crossed the room.
He read my sentence once. His eyes didn't change.
Then he took the pen from my fingers, and he signed under my name without a word.
"Done," my father said, and his voice cracked with relief.
Wayne finally got his arms up around my sister, because there was nothing else a man could do with her hanging from his neck.
He looked at me over her shoulder, lost, a little scared of the room.
I didn't tell him anything.
I had told him everything last time, and he had never once been grateful for it.
Reese turned her head against his collar.
Her face was my face, with a brighter mouth.
She waited until the others were looking at the contracts.
Then she smiled at me and whispered, so only I could hear it:
"Forty floors, Hallie."
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