The Bride Changed. The Bill Didn't. novel · Chapter 22 of 24
Chapter 22: Declined
We settled in the bridal suite at one in the morning.
It was the room where Kelsey should have dressed for last Saturday's wedding.
Tonight it held a conference table dragged in from the hall, a laptop with Cal's Rome lawyer on the screen, and Dalton Thurston at the far end with his tie undone.
Florence sat at my right with her arms crossed.
Cal stood behind my chair.
Kelsey had gone to give her statement, and the three crewmen had gone with her.
The state's attorney's office had opened for them at midnight.
The lawyer on the screen cleared his throat.
"Mr. Thurston, you understand you are signing without your mother's counsel."
"My mother's counsel is in the lobby crying," Dalton said. His voice was thick. "I understand."
"Then we begin."
I had written the terms myself on a legal pad, in block capitals, and the lawyer had put them in order.
The first said Dalton acknowledged the six hundred thousand dollars as a loan, with the wire memo attached.
It said he owed the money with interest from the day it was sent.
He signed it.
The second said he would pay it from the sale of Thurston Construction's yard and equipment within thirty days.
It pledged the company's remaining accounts to the debt.
He read that one twice.
"That's the whole company," he said.
"It's the company your mother used to buy four years of my silence."
"Mara."
"Sign."
He signed.
The third paper was one I had added at the end of the night.
It set aside a fund from the sale.
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