His Tardiness, Her New Marriage Chapter 17

His Tardiness, Her New Marriage Chapter 17

The Langford family was counting on the Harrington investment to save them, but the Ashfords had pulled strings to make the Harringtons pull out completely.

Life was about to get much harder for my so-called family.

As for the three hundred million dollars?

It had arrived long ago.

Transferred into a private trust account, with me as the sole beneficiary.

I had complete control over that money.

“Very efficient.”

I put the document down, my voice even.

From my purse, I took out another thin file and pushed it across the table to him.

“This is the full title to the century-old winery and surrounding vineyards in the Burgundy region of France that my grandfather transferred to my name. You’ve tried to buy it through intermediaries several times over the years, but I never agreed.”

“The most recent market appraisal valued it at three hundred and twenty million dollars. I’ll sell it to you for three hundred million, as a thank you for your help.”

“As for registering the marriage, let’s not. It’s too much trouble.”

“This wedding was just a way to use the Ashford name to shut the Langfords up and to get Blake to stop harassing me in the future. If you ever meet someone you like and need me to play my part, I’ll do whatever it takes.”

Nathaniel smiled and picked up a thicker folder from the side of the desk, pushing it toward me.

“Not so fast. Take a look at this.”

I opened it.

The contents were far more detailed than I had expected.

The file contained not only the industry analysis articles I had anonymously published in the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times,

But also several project proposals I had discreetly passed to Blake or my father.

Following those were photocopies of several handwritten thank-you notes.

They were from a few influential matriarchs in New York and Greenwich society.

Thanking an anonymous consultant for her professional advice and exceptional insight into their family asset allocation and investments in recent years.

The signatures were pseudonyms, but anyone in their circle could easily figure out who they were.

“Several of Blake’s key early decisions—they came from the analyses you anonymously sent him.”

“Those few times the Langford family looked like it was about to collapse, but managed to recover—it was due to precisely targeted injections of capital or resources from unknown sources. It had nothing to do with the Harringtons. Your family probably thought it was Blake helping them all along.”

He looked at me, his gaze seeming to pierce through the carefully constructed facade I had maintained for years.

“Miss Langford, you’ve probably always felt that you had to start your own family to truly escape the one that was suffocating you.”