Chapter 5 The First Gift from My Penniless Husband

When the hospital nurse cut away my stockings, she drew a sharp breath. Both knees were raw, with barely any skin left intact. Claire's heel had gouged the back of my hand deeply enough to expose flesh. I turned my head and stared at the ceiling light. My tears had long since dried, leaving only a hot ache behind my eyes.

Adrian had the doctor document everything: wound locations, depth, infection risk, cause of injury. Every detail recorded clearly.

I asked him, "You think I'm going to sue my father?"

"That's your decision."

"Then why keep the evidence?"

He looked at me. "You can choose to forgive. But you can't let someone else destroy the evidence for you."

Those words pierced the softest part of my heart. My father had taught me for over twenty years that family shame stays behind closed doors. When Claire did something wrong, I was supposed to be understanding because she'd lost her parents. When Ethan hurt me, I was supposed to protect the dignity of both families. When my father harmed me, I was still supposed to uphold the Sterling name. But Adrian said that forgiveness and destroying evidence are two different things.

After my wounds were treated, I received an anonymous email: "If you didn't sign the payment documents, don't go back to the foundation alone. Someone has been using your name." It was signed by Amy Mercer, the Sterling Foundation's former finance director. She'd resigned suddenly two months earlier. My father called her "incompetent."

I arranged to meet her. Adrian warned me, "It could be a trap."

"I know."

"Still going?"

"Yes."

He didn't stop me. He only put me in touch with Daniel Cole, a trust attorney who verified the email's source before the meeting.

The next day, Cole came to the campground in person. He was one of the top trust attorneys in the country. The Whitmore family had offered him a fortune, and he'd turned them down.

I looked at Adrian. "An ordinary investment firm can call in a lawyer like that?"

His expression didn't change. "He owed me a favor."

Cole examined the fragment. "The signature was copied and pasted from one of your previous authorizations. The document number is real, and the receiving account does belong to Whitmore." He paused. "Half a page isn't enough on its own, but it's more than enough to file for preservation of electronic records."

I nodded. "Preserve them first."

That evening, Adrian handed me a black box. Inside was my mother's rose diamond ring, restored. The warped setting had been redesigned into two petals cradling each other, and the cracked diamond, rather than being discarded, had become a point of light at the center of the petals.

I froze. "Who repaired this?"

"An old friend."

"How much?"

"He owed me a favor." By then, I'd stopped asking how many extraordinarily useful friends owed Adrian favors.

On the inside of the band, the date that had been engraved for my engagement to Ethan had been polished away. In its place was the date Adrian and I had registered our marriage.

He also handed me a plain silver pendant. "If you're ever in danger, press here."

"An alarm?"

"Something like that."

I put it on. Just then, Ethan found the campground. The moment he spotted the ring on my hand, he actually laughed. "You talk about moving on, but you're still wearing it?"

I showed him the engraving on the inside. "The ring was my mother's." I pulled my hand back. "As for you, you're not in it anymore."

The smile froze on his face. Then he noticed the documents on the table, and his expression shifted sharply. "You're investigating the foundation?"

"What was this payment for?"

"Standard partnership between the companies."

"No service records on file, and you call that standard?"

He tugged at his tie. "The funds were temporarily redirected. Once the acquisition project recovers, they'll be returned. Nobody lost anything. Stop waving around a few spreadsheets and pretending you're righteous. Business partnerships are something a charity worker like you wouldn't understand."

I stared at him. "So you knew the project was fake."

He hesitated. "I told you, the money will be returned."

In that moment, the last trace of what I'd once felt for him turned to ash. He knew everything. He'd simply chosen his company. Chosen the money that would save it.

Ethan warned me on his way out. "Know when to stop. If you keep digging, you'll destroy your father, Claire, and all of Sterling. Don't throw your life away for some random man you picked up off the street."

I watched him leave and turned to Cole. "Keep digging."