Sold to the Bratva King novel · Chapter 16 of 32

Chapter 16: The Reason

I was still holding his phone when the water shut off.

He came out of my bathroom with a towel around his hips, steam rolling out behind him, smiling.

Then he saw my face, and the phone in my hand, and the smile went.

I turned the screen around so he could read it.

Page 3 worked. Bring the girl to the closing.

"Who's the girl?" I asked.

He didn't reach for the phone.

He stood very still in my kitchen doorway with water running off his shoulders onto my clean floor.

"Halle."

"What closing? The sale is frozen. The board tabled it. You told them you'd never close on a forged page."

"Not that closing."

"Then what closing?"

He looked at the window. At the ficus. Back at me.

"An offer for your half," he said. "Drafted in November. My lawyer has been waiting for me to bring it to you."

The floor didn't move. It only felt like it.

"Tell me the rest," I said. "All of it. Zoya says you keep it in your head and then say it all at once. Say it."

He put on his shirt first, slowly.

Then he told me.

"A month before the dinner, my lawyer pulled your father's will from probate."

"Why?"

"Parker had owed me money for a year. I wanted to know what he actually owned."

"Half."

"Half. And a power of attorney from a sister nobody on the waterfront had ever seen." He rubbed his face.

"I knew page three was forged before I walked into your house."

My hands were cold. I put them flat on the counter.

"So you came to Milton for me."

"I came to Milton for your signature." He didn't look away.

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