On Halloween My Husband Bet I'd Never Leave Him So I Stopped Waiting novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: The Door She Shut

My mother took a suite on the top floor of the Pierre and had a doctor there before I finished my first cup of tea.

The doctor peeled off the soaked dressing and said it was a second-degree burn.

"Another hour in that cold and the blistering would have been worse," she said. "Who did this?"

"A friend," I said. "With soup."

The doctor looked at my mother, and my mother looked at the wall.

When the doctor left, Tommaso brought in a laptop and set it on the dining table.

My mother sat across from me with her hands folded.

"Cara, I asked you once, and I'll ask again. Come home to Milan today."

"No."

She raised an eyebrow.

"They forged my signature, Mamma. They put my shares in Camille's name."

"I know. Tommaso read me the filing in the car."

"Then you know I'm not leaving without them."

My mother glanced at Tommaso, and something that was almost a smile crossed her face.

"The guarantee notice is already served," she said. "Kingsley Harbor has seventy-two hours to find new lenders, and no one will lend to a company whose own insurer walked out."

"Russell will say you're bluffing."

"Let him."

Tommaso opened a document on the screen.

"The board meets next Friday morning. Camille Dorsey will walk in holding thirty-eight percent of the votes, and she will cast them for whatever Russell Kingsley tells her to."

"She'll cast them for herself," I said.

He looked at me for a moment.

"Why do you say that?"

I did not know how to explain what I had seen in the kitchen.

"She looked at her watch," I said. "While I was burning."

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