He Chose Another Heir Now He Wants Me Back Chapter 58
Early the next morning, Nora came to the hotel by herself.
She still had the old backpack slung over her shoulder and was clutching the safe-deposit key. Dante’s men stood at a distance in the lobby, giving her space.
“The court really gave the account back to me?” she asked.
“It was always yours.”
“And the De Lucas really stopped pursuing it?”
“They did. The order was given in front of witnesses.”
She watched me for a long time.
“What did you trade for it?”
“Nothing.”
I placed the court notice and the bank’s release confirmation in front of her. She read them page by page, and the tension slowly eased from her shoulders.
“Ray said families never do anything for free.”
“I’m not helping you in the name of the De Luca family.”
“Then in whose name?”
“Elena’s.”
She lowered her head, her nail scraping at the edge of the key.
“I lied yesterday. I do use Corrigan’s last name. I just didn’t know why he didn’t want me.”
I didn’t speak for Ray.
The ones left behind hate it when others try to pretty up abandonment with nice words. I knew that because I had lived it.
“He’s still alive,” I said. “You can ask him yourself.”
Nora’s head jerked up.
Ray came to the law office at noon.
He was thinner than he had been half a month ago. When he coughed, he pressed a handkerchief to his mouth. He was still wearing the same dark gray suit. When he saw Nora, he stopped in the doorway, looking like a man who had walked too far and no longer knew if he had the right to enter.
Nora didn’t call him Dad.
She slapped the safe-deposit key on the table.
“You left letters for everyone else. Why not for me?”
Ray sat across from her, the veins on the back of his hands rising and falling with his breath.
“I wrote a lot of letters.”
“Where are they?”
“I burned them.”
Nora’s eyes turned red.
“You were so afraid someone would trace me through a letter that you let me think I didn’t have a father?”
“Yes.”
Ray didn’t search for a more dignified way to put it.
“I thought staying away was a form of protection. By the time I understood I was wrong, I didn’t dare come see you anymore.”
“Then why did you dare ask Elena for help?”
“Because I’m dying.”
The room fell silent.
Nora raised her hand and slapped him.
It wasn’t hard, but Ray’s head still turned to the side.
Dante’s men moved. I lifted a hand and stopped them.
“That one was for what you owed me,” Nora cried. “Not some old debt, not some family debt. You owed your daughter.”
Ray slowly turned back.
“Yes.”
He took a bag of hot chestnuts from inside his coat. The brown paper had gone soft from the steam.
“Bought them on the way. You didn’t like them when you were little. I don’t know if you do now…”
Nora snatched the bag and turned her back to wipe her eyes.
The lawyer placed the guardianship confirmation in front of her.
This time, she picked up the pen herself.
“I’m signing, but not because you arranged it.” She looked at me. “Because I choose you.”
“Good.”
I didn’t make her call me anything else, and I didn’t try to hug her.
After she signed, I simply pushed her copy of the documents toward her.
For the first time, the choice was entirely in her own hands.