Bride Number Ninety-Nine: My Groom Married Her First Chapter 06

Bride Number Ninety-Nine: My Groom Married Her First Chapter 06

The next morning, Grant went to the airport himself.

He carried the mended ring and waited a full six hours at the arrivals gate.

The last passenger from the return flight walked out, and still, I never appeared.

His assistant hurried over with a tablet.

“Sir. Miss Ashwood never boarded the flight. Her lawyer just delivered a document.”

Grant took the divorce settlement, glanced at it once, and tore it in half on the spot.

“Tell her I’m not signing.”

“She’s overseas. She’ll cool off in a few days and come back.”

The assistant didn’t leave.

“There’s one more thing.”

It was a notice of equity revocation.

Forty-seven percent of Calloway Group’s initial capital had been invested by me, through Ashwood House.

All these years, I had never once asked for a dividend, never taken part in a single decision.

I had even had the lawyers hide my name from every filing, just so it wouldn’t wound his pride.

Now that I had withdrawn my holdings, three of Calloway Group’s ongoing projects would freeze at once.

Grant flipped to the last page, and his eyes locked on my signature.

“Why does she have these shares?”

The assistant said quietly.

“Sir. Seven years ago, when the company’s funding first collapsed, Miss Ashwood sold the jewelry her

mother left her.”

“Later, when you went abroad to negotiate that partnership, she mortgaged Ashwood House and paid off an

eighty-million-dollar loan on the company’s behalf.”

“She never let me tell you any of it.”

Grant said nothing for a long time.

He suddenly remembered-that winter seven years ago, I’d gone a full month without wearing the pearl

necklace my mother left me.

He’d asked where it had gone.

I’d leaned against his back and answered, laughing:

“Old style. I don’t like it anymore.”

That was the day he’d gotten his first round of funding, and he’d taken me out for lobster bisque.

The last piece of lobster in his bowl-he’d bitten it in half and pushed the rest into my mouth.

“Once I have money, I’ll buy you every piece of jewelry in the world.”

Later, he really did have the money.

He’d given me countless necklaces since. Not one of them was ever the one my mother had left behind.

Some things, it turned out, had been lost forever the moment they were let go.

Grant suddenly turned and got into the car.

“Drive to Ashwood House.”

The gates of Ashwood House were shut tight.

He knocked for half an hour before Walter finally came out.

The old man’s expression turned cold the second he saw him.

“Miss isn’t here.”

“When is she coming back?”

“She’s not.”

Grant let out a cold laugh.

“Her home is here. Where else would she go?”

Walter studied him for a moment, then turned and pulled a cardboard box out of the gatehouse.

“Miss said there’s no point keeping these.”

The box was full of everything he had ever given me.

The love letters he wrote me in college. The silver bracelet from our first date. A ring he’d made from an

aluminum pull tab when he was broke.

At the very bottom was a wedding planning notebook.

Grant opened to the first page.

My handwriting.

[Wedding day-sneak Grant a grapefruit candy. He has too many work dinners, his stomach’s bad, don’t let

him drink on an empty stomach.]

The second page had a sketch of a suit design pinned to it.

[The sapphire cufflinks are already fixed. He always loses things. This time, I’m putting them on his cuffs myself.]

The last page held only one line.

[Seven years of waiting, and I’m finally going to be his wife.]

The ink had bled where a drop of water had smeared it.

Grant didn’t know why I’d cried writing it. He gripped the notebook until his knuckles went white.

Walter set an old key down on top of the box.

“Miss asked me to tell you something.”

“Back when you were so poor you couldn’t even make rent, she stayed with you in that warehouse. So she always felt responsible for seeing it through with you, to the end.”

“But last night, she finally understood-some roads aren’t worth walking to the end.”

The estate gates slowly swung shut.

Grant stood there in the snow.

For the first time, he didn’t say, “She’ll come back.”