The Girl Who Stole My Boyfriend Is About to Marry a Billionaire, So I Stole the Billionaire novel · Chapter 16 of 16
Chapter 16: Stolen
The woman in pearls dropped her phone.
It clattered on the parquet, and nobody picked it up.
Lucian took a small dark box out of his jacket.
He didn't open it yet.
"You asked me twice," he said, and looked up at me. "I'm done waiting. It's my turn."
He opened the box.
It wasn't a grape-sized diamond.
It was a narrow gold band with one small, clear stone, old-fashioned and a little worn.
"It was Harold's wife's," he said. "He gave it to me when I graduated. He said I'd know who to give it to."
My eyes stung.
I didn't wipe them.
"Valeria Quinn," he said. "Marry me instead."
The whole ballroom fell silent.
Somewhere near the front, the quartet leader lowered his bow.
I looked at the Devil of Park Avenue on one knee in the back row of his own ruined wedding.
"On one condition," I said.
He raised the eyebrow with the scar.
"You have to buy me a new television."
For one second he just stared at me.
Then he laughed.
It came out of him loud and helpless, a real laugh, head back, the kind I'd never heard from him.
Four hundred people had never heard it either.
A few of them started laughing too, not even knowing why.
"Deal," he said, still laughing. "Is that a yes?"
"That's a yes."
He slid the ring onto my finger.
It fit.
Then he stood and kissed me in front of everyone, and the ballroom exploded.
My friend from the office, who had talked her way in as somebody's plus-one, screamed from the fourth row.
Margo started a slow clap by the side door.
After a moment the judge, looking confused, joined in.
Two months later I married him on the roof of Graves Tower, among the little trees, in December wind.
Twelve guests.
Margo in a black pantsuit, crying, and denying it.
My friend in the gold dress, because I'd made her take it back.
My neighbor in a fur hat.
The driver, who gave me away, because my father had died when I was nine and Lucian said the driver had earned it.
By then, Jake had pleaded guilty to wire fraud and forgery.
The judge took everything he had to repay the people he'd stolen from.
The first check went to me.
Thirty-one thousand dollars, with a note from the court on top.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–8 of The Girl Who Stole My Boyfriend Is About to Marry a Billionaire, So I Stole the Billionaire are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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