Chapter Five: The Woman Who Walked Away

POV: Lilly Roswell

“It’s a good forgery,” said Dana Whitfield the lawyer I found, I wasn’t trying to deceive pierce I am just desperate and definitely can’t let Ryan have even a niddle from this inheritance. “That’s what scares me.”

She tapped my signature with a red pen. Her office was two rooms above a dry cleaner’s. It smelled of steam and burnt coffee, and a box fan rattled in the window.

I’d picked her out of the phone book at the Alder’s front desk, because I trusted nobody with a fancy website. After Pierce’s glass tower, I liked it here better.

“Say it plain,” I said. “I haven’t slept since yesterday.”

“Plain, then.” She slid the Fox Holdings pages across the desk. “Ryan’s company owes a bank twelve million dollars. This signature says you promised to pay it back if he can’t.”

I laughed, short and ugly. “I don’t have twelve million dollars.”

“In twenty-eight days, you will.” She let that sit. “He married a girl he knew would be rich, put her name on his debt, and waited for the money to arrive.”

The paper cup in my hand crumpled. Cold coffee ran over my knuckles, and I let it.

“And the forty percent?” My voice came out thin. “Pierce made it sound like Ryan could still take it.”

“Pierce muddied it.” Dana handed me a napkin. “The trust gives forty percent to your lawful husband. Ryan’s certificate is fake, so he gets nothing.

Whoever you legally marry gets the forty. Kingsley signed his away before you asked. That’s the only reason I’m letting you near him.”

“So Ryan loses the money.”

“He loses the money and keeps the debt. And that signature is fraud, Lilly. It can put him in prison.” Her pen stopped. “But if he hears you’re about to marry, he files an objection and the trustees freeze everything. So you marry fast, and you marry quiet. Not one word until the papers are filed.”

I folded the page into my folder. My hands were steady. That surprised me.

Ivy was waiting on the sidewalk when I came down. She stood by the dry cleaner’s door in big sunglasses and a teal scarf, hugging her bag like a life jacket.

“How did you find me?”

“Ryan tracked your phone.” She pushed the sunglasses up. Her mascara had run, just like at my wedding. “He saw you went to Kingsley Tower. Twice.

He thinks you’re begging that man for money.” A small, wet laugh slipped out of her. “Men like that don’t help girls like you, Lilly. They laugh.”

A bus hissed past and shoved hot air up my coat. “Is that why you came? To warn me?”

“I came because…” Her fingers twisted the scarf until the knuckles went white. “I never meant for it to go this far. He said you always forgive him, and I…”

“When did you decide keeping him was worth losing me?”

Her mouth opened. Nothing came out.

“That’s what I thought.” I stepped around her.

I walked six blocks to Kingsley Tower and never looked back. Halfway there, I thumbed my phone’s location off and felt something close to joy.

Lex was on a call when I pushed through his door. He took one look at my face and ended it. Rain had started against the glass behind him, thin gray lines sliding down forty floors.

I laid Dana’s papers on his desk. “One year. My inheritance stays mine. The forty percent stays refused, like you already signed. No pretending for cameras. And not one word to anyone until the papers are filed.”

He read standing up, one finger sliding down each page. He signed the last line without a pause.

“That’s it?” I said. “Not one argument?”

“You asked for nothing unreasonable.” He capped the pen. “Ten days. The county courthouse. Quietly.”

“The same courthouse where I found out my marriage was a lie.”

“I want the first real record of you to be in that building.”

It was a strange thing to say, and it landed in my chest before I could stop it. I looked away first. “Yesterday you said you’d find me a better reason. Did you?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me.”

“Not yet.”

His assistant appeared in the doorway with a tablet. “Sir, there’s a photo of Miss Roswell at our front doors going around the business blogs. The headline says she came begging.”

Heat flooded my face. “Take it down.”

“No.” Lex didn’t even glance at the screen. “Let it run.”

“They’ll laugh at me.”

“Good. People who are laughing are looking the wrong way.” His gray eyes held mine. “Let them think you came to beg. In ten days, they’ll learn how wrong they were.”

My phone buzzed in my coat. Then again. Then it wouldn’t stop. I pulled it out and the messages stacked up like bricks. Ryan’s mother: Begging strangers for money now? You were always desperate.

Girls from my old study group: Is it true? Poor Lilly. A row of laughing faces from numbers I’d never seen. Ivy, again and again.

The whole city was laughing, and not one of them knew what I’d just signed.

I turned the phone facedown on his desk. My cheeks burned, but my back stayed straight. “Let them.”

It buzzed once more against the wood. Unknown number. I almost let it ring out. Then I picked it up.

“Miss Roswell?” A woman’s voice. Low and calm, almost kind. “Please don’t hang up.”

“Who is this?”

“Someone who knew your father.” A clock ticked somewhere on her end. “Before this goes any further, ask Lex Kingsley where he was the night Richard Knight died.”

“Wait. Who are…”

The line clicked dead.

I looked up. Lex had not moved, and the pen in his hand had stopped. He didn’t ask who had called. He didn’t ask what she’d said. He set the pen down, slow and careful, the way you put down something that might go off.

“Sit down, Lilly.”