I Signed Away Eight Million To Leave Him Chapter 24
After that number was blocked, Graham finally disappeared from my life.
After losing Sloane and the house, he fell apart completely, drinking himself numb every day.
Two years later, I saw his obituary in the news.
A fire had broken out in the small beach cottage he was renting. When the flames spread in the middle of the night, he was too drunk to wake up and couldn’t make it out.
Firefighters later found the point of origin in the ruins.
It was a pile of old wedding invitations that had been set alight.
On the charred paper, Graham’s name and mine were still faintly visible.
In the end, he died in a fire he had lit himself.
I did not return to Palm Beach for the funeral.
I heard that Beatrice’s hair had turned white overnight. She withdrew from all her social circles and lived alone in the empty estate, never hosting another dinner.
Sloane, meanwhile, took the marital home and a large settlement under the terms of the prenup. Not long after, she became engaged to a European aristocrat, as if Graham had never existed.
And that spring, Eli and I got the keys to our new house.
It still wasn’t large. The kitchen still let in a draft. The backyard was still a mess of weeds.
But only our names were on the deed.
There was no trust, no charity, and no one who could ever reclaim it in the name of kindness.
Eli and I stood in the yard, talking about where to plant flowers and where to hang an old swing.
The sunlight fell across the keys in my palm.
This time, the future truly belonged to me.Â