That made everything harder.
“You believe me?”
“Yes.”
“Then why—”
“Because love is not the same as trust.”
She removed her engagement ring.
Adrian stared at it.
“I don’t want it back.”
“That’s not your choice.”
She placed it in his hand.
“Today I learned what you do when everyone in the room says I’m guilty.”
He began crying.
Lily did too.
“I needed you,” she said. “Not to fight your mother. Not to scream. Just to know me.”
“I panicked.”
“I know.”
“I was wrong.”
“I know.”
“Can I fix it?”
“Not by getting married.”
That sentence saved both of them from making another terrible decision out of emotion.
Adrian left with the ring.
Lily spent the night in my suite.
At midnight, she asked something I expected eventually.
“Why didn’t you tell me you owned the Grand Meridian?”
“I told you I invested after Dad died.”
“You skipped the part where you became a hotel group.”
“I didn’t want money becoming the center of your life.”
“Did you think I’d become spoiled?”
“No.”
“Then why?”
I looked toward the window.
The city lights stretched beneath us.
“Because after your father died, newspapers wrote about the company sale. People called. Investors. Charities. Men I hadn’t seen since college. Suddenly everyone had a reason to be close.”
“And you hated it.”
“Yes.”
“So you became the florist.”
“I am a florist.”
“You own nine hotels.”
“I can contain multitudes.”
She smiled.
Then grew serious.
“Did Dad know?”
“He helped buy the first one.”
Her face softened.
I had kept that history private because talking about my husband sometimes reopened a room I had worked hard to close.
“He designed part of the security archive,” I told her.
“The one that caught Vanessa?”
“Yes.”
Lily began crying again.
This time she smiled through it.
“Dad ruined her plan.”
“Eight years late.”
“Still counts.”
It did.
The following morning, Noah called Adrian with another discovery.
Harrow Capital had pledged not only Adrian’s trust shares.
Richard had used a trust-owned Manhattan building as collateral for a $40 million emergency loan.
The lender believed Adrian approved.
His signature was forged there too.
The loan was already in default.
If the lender foreclosed, hundreds of tenants and three Harrow subsidiaries would be affected.
Adrian had spent one day losing a wedding.
