My Fake Death Was The Punchline To His Cruel Joke Chapter 36
The day the new project was announced, another package arrived from Bennett’s lawyer.
Leo opened it for me.
There was no letter.
Just the sapphire brooch and the old business plan.
Under the title of co-founder, Bennett Shaw’s name had been violently crossed out with a thick, black marker.
Beside it, in shaky handwriting, was a single sentence:
[It was always yours.]
Leo frowned.
“Want me to toss it?”
I picked up the business plan.
The prime location. The generous funding. The ready-made clients.
Every page had once made my heart ache with hope. Every page had reinforced the toxic belief that dependence was a form of love.
But my studio had a lease I had signed. It had employees who stood by me. It had a portfolio of work we had built together.
It didn’t need this ghost of a future.
I walked over to the office shredder and fed the business plan into it, page by page.
Bennett Shaw’s signature was the first thing to be torn apart.
As for the brooch, I didn’t keep it.
“Send it back.”
Leo raised an eyebrow.
“He might take that as a sign you still hate him.”
“That’s his business.”
I closed the velvet box.
“I’m not accepting the Shaw family legacy. And I don’t need his permission to be who I am.”
A week later, the lawyer forwarded the delivery confirmation.
Bennett had signed for the package.
This time, there was no reply. He never tried to contact me again.
I heard later, through the legal grapevine, that during a therapy session in prison, he had finally admitted that his desperate apologies had never been about making me whole. They were about easing his own guilt.
I read the email and closed it without emotion.
Whether he finally understood or not no longer mattered.
His belated remorse was his to carry.
My future was my own.