From A Humiliating Bet To The Boss He Can’t Have Chapter 11
I paused.
“What exactly do you still want?”
Grant tightened his grip on the phone.
“I looked into the wedding-planning emails. It was Sloane using your name. Mara, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have believed any of it, and I definitely shouldn’t have forced that agreement on you at the party.”
The line went quiet for a moment.
“You didn’t know, or you just never thought to ask?”
Grant’s breath caught.
“The planner’s contact information was right there in the contract, and you’ve had my email for four years.” My voice was flat. “If you had asked one question, you would have known those requests didn’t come from me. But Sloane said I was after Whitmore money, and you believed her.”
“I let her influence me.”
“And removing me from Lily’s emergency contact list—was that her influence, too?”
Grant couldn’t answer.
“I took care of her when she had a fever, sat with her through therapy, picked her up from school in the middle of the night. But all it took was one ‘she’s using the child’ from Sloane, and you erased my name.”
“Mara, I really am sorry.”
I gave a soft, hollow laugh.
“That apology came faster than your trust ever did.”
The call ended.
Grant was still holding the phone, his face pale.
Sloane hurried to speak.
“She’s using old grievances to make you feel guilty again. Grant, she’s always known how to use your guilt—”
“Are you still talking?”
Grant looked up, and his voice was so cold the whole club went silent.
“Was removing Mara from Lily’s emergency contact list for my own good, too?”
Sloane froze.
Grant moved toward her, step by step.
“Or was it that from the very beginning, you never intended to let her become part of our family?”