You Want My Grandma’s $8 BILLION Inheritance DREAM ON! SCUMBAG, Watch Your Empire COLLAPSE Overnight! Chapter 15
Day Seven.
The day the court summons was served to Alex.
It was also the twenty-sixth year and seventh day since we’d first met.
He came to see me.
Not home.
Me.
Because I’d already moved out.
The night before, I’d packed every personal belonging I owned and checked into the Presidential Suite at the Peninsula Grand Hotel in New York.
My grandmother had lived in that suite for years. The hotel had been sold, but the new owners had agreed to let me stay there for another three months.
Alex stood in the hotel lobby in a tailored suit, looking as polished as ever.
But up close, the dark circles beneath his eyes and the tension locked in his jaw gave him away.
“Evie.”
“I’m Evelyn Grant now,” I corrected. “We were never legally married. You don’t have the right to call me by my nickname.”
He froze for a second before forcing a bitter smile.
—
“All right… Ms. Grant.”
He sat across from me.
“Can we talk?”
“About what?”
“Dropping the lawsuit.”
“On what terms?”
He looked at me with complete sincerity.
“I’ll transfer everything I own to you. My entire stake in Langford Properties. Every property. Every bank account. It’s all yours.”
I did the math.
Langford Properties was worth twelve billion dollars. He owned forty-one percent—roughly five billion. Add in his real estate and liquid assets, and the total came to around six billion.
Six billion dollars.
To make me withdraw the lawsuit.
“Not enough,” I said.
He frowned.
“Then how much do you want?”
“It’s not about the money.”
I met his eyes.
—
“Alexander Langford… do you know why I sued you?”
“Because of the marriage certificate. Because of the forged loan guarantee…”
“No.”
“It was because of that tonic.”
The color drained from his face.
“Your mother and Sophia drugged me for an entire year. They destroyed my ability to have children.”
My voice stayed calm, as if I were reading from a medical report.
“I went through six rounds of IVF. Every single failure, I blamed myself. I cried through countless nights, convinced my body had failed me.”
“And every time, you held me and told me it wasn’t my fault.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed.
“You said you didn’t care whether we ever had children.”
I looked straight into his eyes.
“And then you’d turn around and go see the twins Sophia had for you.”
“Evie—”
“I told you.”
My voice turned icy.
—
“Don’t call me Evie.”
Silence.
After a long moment, he spoke again.
“About the tonic… I didn’t know. My mother acted on her own.”
“You didn’t know?”
“I swear—”
“Alexander Langford.”
I took out my phone, opened an audio file, and pressed Play.
It was a recording Rachel had obtained the day before.
Recorded inside the Langford family estate.
Diane’s voice came first.
“Alex, you agreed to use that drug in the first place! Now that everything’s blowing up, you’re trying to pin it all on me?”
Alex answered in a hushed voice.
“Mom, keep your voice down…”
Diane snapped back.
“You were the one who said that if Evie had a child, she’d be impossible to deal with. You said we needed to keep this under wraps until the timing was right—”
“Enough!” Alex shouted. “Stop talking!”
—
The recording ended.
I paused it and looked up at him.
His face had gone completely white.
As white as paper.
“So.”
I held his gaze.
“You said you didn’t know?”
His lips parted.
No words came out.
“Alexander Langford.”
I rose to my feet.
“I’m giving you seven days. Seven days from now, that recording will be played in open court.”
“If you want to end this with even a shred of dignity, accepted a plea deal before trial.”
“If you want to drag this out…”
I picked up my bag.
“Go ahead.”
“The one going to prison is you.”
I turned and walked toward the elevator.
—
“Evelyn Grant”
His voice echoed through the lobby.
I stopped.
But I didn’t turn around.
“Do twenty-six years together really mean nothing to you?”
I smiled.
Then I looked back at him.
“Alexander Langford…”
“It was you who stopped valuing those twenty-six years first.”
The elevator doors slid open.
I stepped inside.
As the doors closed, I caught one last glimpse of him standing alone in the center of the lobby, perfectly still.
The man I’d loved for more than half my life…
Now looked like a statue with its soul hollowed out.