He Married Another So I Accepted My Arranged Husband Chapter 21
I read the email twice.
Desmond turned off the music that had been playing softly in the background.
“Do we need to go back to New York?”
“Yes.”
I opened the attachment.
The Ferraro Family was arguing that since Northstar had always been registered under Salvatore’s name and was listed as one of the Family’s legitimate businesses, a private nominee agreement was not binding.
The Moretti Family’s position was even more blunt.
They produced the alliance agreement signed at the wedding and demanded that the liquidation committee assign the fifty percent share to Talia’s estate.
She was gone, but both families were still clinging to her name to fight over the spoils.
Desmond read the email over my shoulder and offered no opinion.
“What do you want to do?”
I opened my laptop and pulled up the nominee agreement that had been witnessed by our advisers.
“Apply for public arbitration.”
“I didn’t want to rely on the Conti name, so I put the shares in Salvatore’s. Now they want to use that to claim I never owned any part of Northstar.”
I found the encrypted email from the day I left New York.
After I had demanded the equity split, Salvatore himself had sent a message asking why I wanted to “carve off half the company.”
The voice message was still there, too.
He had said we were going to get married eventually, so what was there to divide?
He had never once denied that half the company was mine.
He had just refused to give it back.
“I’m coming with you.” Desmond reached for his coat.
I placed my hand over his.
“You don’t need to appear for me this time.”
“I know.”
He draped the coat over my shoulders anyway.
“I’m just going back with you.”
I looked at him and a small smile broke through.
“I’ve interrupted our honeymoon again.”
“This doesn’t count.”
He fastened the top button for me.
“Wherever you are, that’s my vacation.”
The next day, the Conti advisers filed the application with the liquidation committee.
In less than an hour, both the Ferraro and Moretti families agreed to the arbitration.
They probably thought all I had was a private agreement signed years ago.
But the witness list for the arbitration happened to overlap significantly with the witness list from that fateful wedding.