He Gave Her My Home So I Took Back My Life Chapter 04
By the time I got back to the hotel, the mud on the hem of my dress had dried into a stiff crust.
Thirty-seven pearls sat in a clear plastic evidence bag on the table. The snapped silk thread was tangled among them. The antique clasp was gone, and at least two pearls were still missing.
I set the bag down and stared at it for a long time.
When my phone rang, Mateo’s name flashed on the screen.
I answered.
“Nora, are you okay?”
His voice was steady. He didn’t ask about the humiliation that by now must have been the talk of Savannah, and he didn’t tell me to calm down.
I looked at the pearls in the bag.
“The necklace is broken.”
“I know.” Mateo paused. “I’ve already contacted the best antique jewelry restoration specialist in New York. He’s restored nineteenth-century natural pearl pieces. As long as the main components are there, there’s hope.”
I tightened my grip on the phone.
“The clasp is gone. And some of the pearls are still missing.”
“I’ll have someone at the estate first thing in the morning. They can’t clean the garden tonight, and they won’t be allowed to touch the scene.”
For a moment, I almost couldn’t speak.
Graham had watched me kneel in the mud and only thought about the dinner I had ruined.
Mateo was hundreds of miles away, and his first thought was to secure the scene.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet.” His voice dropped. “Nora, I’m more worried about you. Don’t open the door for anyone tonight. If Graham shows up, call me first.”
The words had barely left his mouth when the lock on my door gave a soft click.
I looked up.
The hotel room door swung open, and Graham walked in, a key card in his hand.
He still wore his black dinner jacket, though his bow tie was loosened and his face was a mask of irritation.
“How did you get in?”
“The room was booked through the foundation. I had the front desk issue another key.”
He said it as if it were the most natural thing in the world, as if even after exiling me to a hotel he still had every right to walk into my room.
“Nora?” Mateo had clearly heard the intrusion.
“I’ll call you back.”
I ended the call.
Graham glanced at my phone, then tossed a familiar blue jewelry box onto the table.
It struck the evidence bag, nudging the scattered pearls.
“Vivian wanted me to bring this to you.”
He flipped open the lid.
Inside, on a bed of black velvet, lay a brand-new pearl necklace—perfectly round, perfectly matched, the Tiffany & Co. logo stamped on the clasp.
“She feels terrible about tonight. This one costs more than your old one did. Consider it compensation.”
I looked at it for a few seconds, a humorless laugh building in my chest.
My mother’s necklace had come from my grandmother. The pearls weren’t perfectly uniform, and the antique silver clasp was engraved with the Hale family’s camellia crest.
This was a modern, store-bought piece that could be replaced any day of the week.
Graham was trying to replace three generations of memory with a credit card receipt.
“So now you’ve been compensated.” He snapped the box shut. “Tonight ends here. Tomorrow, I’ll have PR put out a statement saying you’ve been under a lot of stress lately and that there was a misunderstanding with Vivian.”
“A misunderstanding?”
“Unless you want everyone to know you shoved her over a few pearls?”
“I didn’t push her.”
Graham rubbed his brow.
“She’s willing to compensate you. What more do you want?”
“I don’t accept it.”
“What?”
I picked up the jewelry box and threw it, necklace and all, into the trash can.
The corner of the box hit the metal rim with a dull thud.
Graham’s face darkened.
“Nora Hale, what the hell are you trying to do?”
“I want Vivian to answer for what she did.”
“She already apologized and compensated you!”
“I didn’t hear an apology. All I saw was you, bringing me a mass-produced necklace and telling me my mother’s legacy can be replaced.”
“It’s just an old necklace!”
The room went dead silent.
For a split second, Graham seemed to realize what he had just said.
But almost immediately, a cold laugh escaped him.
“So what is this really about? You want me to cut Vivian off?”
I looked at him, and the foolishness of the last ten years hit me with pitiful clarity.
“You think I still want to make things right with you?”
His brow tightened.
“I didn’t go back there to fight over you. I went back for what belongs to me.”
“Don’t dress it up like that.”
Graham took a step closer, his shadow falling over me.
“Isn’t this what you wanted? For me to come back and soothe your pride? You crashed the dinner, humiliated Vivian, made a spectacle of yourself in front of the board. You wanted to prove the Ashfords can’t function without you.”
“I never contacted the board.”
“You’re still denying it?”
His phone rang before he could say more.
Vivian.
He answered immediately.
I could hear her crying through the speaker.
“Graham, Alma just called. She’s canceling all foundation funding for the memorial garden project.”
“What?”
“She said the project’s finances and public image need to be reexamined, and that I’m no longer fit to represent the foundation. Did Nora say something to her? I swear I didn’t mean to break the necklace…”
Graham looked up at me, his expression twisting.
He muttered a few hurried words of comfort to Vivian, then hung up.
“When did you talk to Alma?”
“I told you, I didn’t.”
“Then who else could it have been?”
“Maybe she finally realized Vivian never should have been handling foundation money in the first place.”
Graham lunged, seizing my wrist.
Before I could react, my back slammed into the wall.
He pinned my arm above my head, pain shooting through the bone as if it might crack.
“That project was for my brother!” he ground out. “Vivian spent a year preparing for it. You knew how much it meant to her, and you still chose this moment to destroy it?”
“Let go of me.”
“How did you become so cold?”
His grip tightened, relentless.
“You put up with it the first nine times for the family’s reputation. Why not this time? It was just one dinner. Just one necklace. If you had just backed down one more time, none of this would have happened!”
I stared at the face I had once known better than my own.
Even now, he still believed I was the problem.
That I should move out of my own house, surrender my place, let another woman wear my mother’s necklace.
That even after being framed, I should have stayed silent for the sake of the Ashford family name.
I drove my knee up hard, knocking him off balance, and wrenched my hand free with all my strength.
Graham stumbled back, staring at me in disbelief.
I rubbed my reddening wrist and straightened my clothes.
“There won’t be a tenth time.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means this doesn’t end with you tossing me an explanation like some kind of favor.”
I picked up my phone from the table. Mateo’s call log was still on the screen.
“I’ve already started legal proceedings. The necklace, the witnesses in the garden, and what you just did—I’m giving it all to my lawyer.”
Graham looked as if I’d said something absurd.
“A lawyer?”
He gave a short, mocking laugh.
“What lawyer in Savannah would dare go against the Ashford family for you? Nora, don’t forget, everything you have now—”
“Graham Ashford, you are not my only option.”
His voice cut off.
I looked straight at him, my own voice slow and clear.
“I’ve already retained counsel.”
“His name is Mateo Ruiz. My lawyer.”