“You realize how this looks,” I said.
Grant leaned closer, his voice dropping to a whisper only I could hear.
“You were a mistake,” he said coldly. “And honestly? You never brought anything to the table.”
He believed it. He believed I had nothing. He believed I was nothing.
What Grant didn’t know was that my quiet father—the man who hated attention and lived in a modest house outside Dayton—owned a manufacturing company worth more than forty million dollars.
And after my parents passed away two years earlier, I had inherited it.
I never told Grant. Not once.
Standing there in that courthouse hallway, watching him walk away with Tessa on his arm, I made myself a promise:
I wouldn’t beg. I wouldn’t chase him. I would rebuild my life quietly.
And if Grant Ellis ever crossed my path again, he would finally understand exactly what he had thrown away.
