LOGINShare
C6
publish date:
2026-08-30 06:52:03Chapter 6
Her Father’s Handwriting
Her aunt’s voice faded as she moved down the hall. Ivie waited until she couldn’t hear anything at all, then left the building without speaking to anyone.
In the car she sat for a moment before she told the driver where to go. “The house,” she said and the driver took her to her father's house
The study smelled like him. She hadn’t expected it. Nearly a year, and no one had aired the room out or packed away what didn’t need to stay. The leather chairs still held the shape of him. The cologne was mostly gone, but not completely. She stood in the doorway longer than she meant to before she made herself walk in.
She hadn’t come looking for anything. The rest of the house felt like it belonged to other people now. This room still felt like his.
His photograph sat on the corner of the desk the way it always had him on the terrace in Cornwall, squinting into the sun, one hand half raised as if he’d been about to wave someone off when the shutter clicked. She picked it up.
“Daddy.” she whispered the word. She cleared her throat. “I don’t even know where to start.”
She sat on the edge of the desk, the frame in both hands.
“Damien and Sophia, the two people that I trusted with all my life.” She tried to hold the years forming in her eyes and sniff.
“They’ve been planning something. For a long time, I think. I heard them at the party talking about the company, about me, like I was just something they were waiting to get past.” She blinked hard. “Sophia stood up at my engagement dinner and said she’d never seen two people more right for each other. I believed her.”
She wiped under her eye with the back of her hand, quick, irritated at herself.
“And then it was everywhere. Phones out before I even left the room. There was already a story online before I got home that I imagined the whole thing, that I couldn’t handle the pressure.” A short breath escaped her, not quite a laugh. “Now Edmund’s taken me off everything. Sat me down in that boardroom with people who’ve known me since I was a child, and not one of them looked at me. Aunt Priscilla voted with him without blinking.”
She stopped. Pressed her lips together.
“I heard her on the phone after. She sounded happy about it.” Her thumb moved along the edge of the frame without her noticing. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now, she cleans the remaining tears left.”
She sat there for a while, looking at her father's picture, imagining if he could answer her now, tell her what to do or everything will be fine. Then she set the photo down, wiped her face with both hands, and stood up, walked behind the desk and sat in his chair, It was too big for her. It had always been too big, even when she was small and used to spin in it while he worked until he told her to stop before she made herself sick.
Her hand found the edge of the drawer before she’d decided to open it.
Inside were the things no one had bothered to sort. A fountain pen he’d stopped using years ago because the nib had gone soft. Reading glasses in a case that still carried his initials pressed into the leather. A photograph of her mother, young, beautiful, laughing at something outside the frame. Ivie had never seen it before. She looked at it for a second, then set it face down and kept going. She didn’t have room for one more thing right now.
Under a stack of old correspondence she found a ledger.
It wasn’t unusual on its own. Her father had always kept things on paper as well as in the system an old habit from before everything went digital. She almost closed it without really looking. Then she recognized the handwriting on the inside cover, small, slanted, the way he wrote when he was thinking instead of presenting. She wanted to keep it open a little longer just to look at the shape of his letters.
She opened it properly.
Pages of figures, dated a little over two years back. Nothing dramatic at first. Numbers next to short labels, some she recognized, some she didn’t. She ran her finger down a column out of habit, the way she used to when she reviewed reports for him.
Halfway down the third page, something didn’t add up.
She stopped. Went back to the top and checked again, slower. A transfer, dated, with a figure that didn’t correspond to anything she recognized from the company’s public filings for that quarter. She knew those filings. She’d helped prepare parts of them herself, back when she still had a desk on the fourteenth floor and people still told her things.
She flipped forward, looking for the same entry somewhere else, some reference that would make it fit. It wasn’t a huge sum not enough to be an obvious scandal but it was specific enough that it should have shown up. A line item. A reference number. Something.
Nothing.
Maybe a personal loan, she thought. Something for a relative that never made it into the company’s usual language. People kept things off the books for reasons that had nothing to do with wrongdoing. She wanted that to be true. She sat there wanting it.
It didn’t come.
She glanced at the photo again and thought, not for the first time that day, that there were parts of him she’d never been let into.
She turned the page, half expecting the next one to explain the last. The entries simply continued, calm and orderly. The handwriting never hesitated, as if the person who wrote them had no reason to think anyone else would ever open this book.
Something in the drawer creaked when she went to set the ledger down. That was when she noticed it a slight gap between two of the middle pages, like something had been slid between them and left long enough to leave an impression.
She opened to the gap.
A torn piece of paper sat wedged there, smaller than her palm, ragged along one edge. Most of it was blank, or close to it a few numbers cut off mid-digit, half a line of handwriting that stopped before it meant anything.
One word survived whole, near the torn edge, in the same slanted hand as the rest of the ledger.
Archive.
Ivie sat with the scrap between her fingers. The study was quiet around her. Her father’s
chair was still too big beneath her, the way it had always been.
Latest chapter
The Vows we broke C17
Chapter 17 What the Papers Say About HimIvie set the folder from Alexander’s office on the kitchen table, unopened, and opened her laptop instead.She typed his name into the search bar. Three years of press releases arranged themselves into a tidy, flattering timeline. Blackwood International’s expansion into logistics. A profile calling him “notoriously private.” A charity gala photo dark suit, not smiling, standing slightly apart from the group even in a posed shot.None of it told her anything she hadn’t already picked up sitting across from the man himself.She scrolled back further. Ten years. Fifteen. The coverage thinned the deeper she went, the way it does for someone who kept himself out of cameras on purpose. She tried a different search: Alexander Blackwood early career.Most results repeated the same short paragraph, word for word, the kind of biography a company writes about itself and lets journalists copy from it without checking. Built his first company from a small
The Vows we broke C16
Chapter 16- Marriage, Typed at the Top of the PageIvie stared at the word again Marriage.She hesitated with her hand over the paper, then slowly drew it back into her lap.Alexander said nothing.She looked up."This is a joke right?”“Does it look like a joke to you?""You're asking me to marry you?""I'm offering a contract. Marriage is a legal structure that facilitates the possibility of the rest of it."Ivie exchanged a long look with the page, then with the remainder of the folder still tucked beneath his hand. "You said you could clear the debt. Keep the house.""Yes. If you agree to become my wife under the contract.”"For how long.""Two years minimum before either of us can request a termination. After that, either party may dissolve the arrangement freely under the given terms.""And during those two years.""You keep the house. The debt is cleared in full. Your father's estate remains your responsibility. You retain your name, if that is your preference. Nothing is clai
The Vows we broke C15
Chapter 15 Two WeeksIvie had barely woken when she stretched beneath the sheets and yawned. Sleep still clung to her, but she pushed herself out of bed and reached for the clothes she had left on the chair the night before.She was pulling her top over her head when her phone buzzed on the bedside table.She stopped.For a moment, she considered ignoring it. Then she reached for the phone and unlocked the screen.An email.She opened it.The message was short and formal. An invitation to a meeting concerning a mutually beneficial arrangement. The time was stated clearly. So was the address.She stared at the screen for several seconds before letting out a quiet hiss and dropping the phone back onto the bed.Of course.She should have known Alexander Blackwood wasn't finished with her.She picked up her clothes and walked into the bathroom.The shower helped wake her up, but it did nothing to settle her thoughts. By the time she
The Vows we broke C14
Chapter 14What He Doesn't Say Out LoudShe had said no without actually saying it.Alexander sat with that after she left, the pen still in his hand until he noticed and set it down. Most people who came into this office already knew how the meeting would end. They arrived prepared to accept whatever terms he offered because they had run out of other options. Ivie Sterling had not done that. She had made him repeat himself. She had called him on the pacing before he had fully decided to do it.He hadn’t planned for that.Seventeen days still left her with almost no room to maneuver. She would need the money. Pride only stretched so far when a house and a deadline were involved. But the arrangement would require more handling than he had expected, and he preferred plans that did not need handling.He buzzed his lawyer’s office. “Marcus Reid in my office now, if he’s free.”Reid arrived twenty minutes later with a laptop bag over one shoulder.Alexander didn't waste time.“I want you to
The Vows we broke C13
Chapter 13 The First Ten MinutesThe meeting was set for ten the next morning. Reyes had sent her the address, but Ivie didn’t recognize the place. She hadn’t even agreed to anything yet, yet he had already arranged everything as though her answer had never been in doubt.She didn’t trust Alexander. She didn’t trust the place he wanted her to go, either. But trust was a luxury she could no longer afford.She had seventeen days left.Maybe less.The following morning, Ivie took a bath and chose one of her best outfits, the navy suit she used to wear to board meetings.Putting it on brought back memories she had been trying not to think about. Those days when she had walked into her father’s company with confidence, knowing exactly where she belonged. Now, the same clothes felt almost like something borrowed from a life that no longer existed.She ate a quick breakfast, then ordered a Bolt ride and showed the driver the address Reyes had sent her.The drive was quiet.Ivie stared out t
The Vows we broke C12
Chapter 12The Last Number in the ColumnThe bank opened at nine. Ivie was on the phone a few minutes past nine.“Hello, good morning.”“Good morning, ma’am. How may I help you?”“I need to speak with the loan officer.” Ivie said over the phone “One moment, please.”She waited, gripping the phone tighter when the call finally connected.“Good morning. This is the loan department.”“Hi. I want to apply for a loan.”“Alright, ma’am. What amount are you looking for?”“I’m not sure yet. I have a problem I need to solve, and I have seventeen days left.”“Alright, what is your name please.”“Ivie Sterling,” Ivie replied, hoping for good news.There was a short pause.“Okay ma'am,” the loan officer said. His tone was polite, but distant. “But the deadline isn’t the problem. Your financial profile has changed.”Ivie frowned. “Changed how?”“Your income status. A month ago, you had steady employment with Sterling Holdings. Our records now show that your position has been terminated, so your c
You May Also Like
My Best Friend's Father
Thorns637.3K viewsBeyond the Divorce
Third Blossom3.1M viewsWet Desires: {A Steamy Collection}
The Book Magician590.7K viewsWarning: My Mommy is A Savage!
Seeking A Peaceful Life2.2M viewsThe Winter He Fell for the Wife He Lost
Scarlett Neal512 viewsTHE ARROGANT CEO'S CURVY CONTRACT
Jocelyne 160 viewsMARRIED TO MY FIANCÉ’S HOCKEY PLAYER BROTHER
Starlyn Wilder177 viewsDeals On Ice
The Artist 128 views
