The Underboss Voted No So I Chose A New Life Chapter 34
Hadrian found out the next day that Cameron and I had had dinner together.
The hotel front desk had seen us come back, but no one had gossiped.
It was Leo who, somehow, heard about it and called him.
“So she’s really with that editor now?”
Hadrian was reviewing the hotel’s budget for the next quarter.
“That’s none of your business.”
“And you’re just going to watch?”
“That’s none of my business, either.”
Once the words left his mouth, he sat still for a long time.
What he had never been able to accept was the idea of someone entering my life without his permission.
Now, at last, he admitted that where I went and who I loved were no longer his decisions to make.
Leo laughed coldly on the other end of the line.
“You drove all of us away, and she still didn’t come back. Was it worth it?”
Hadrian looked at the two-hundred-thousand-dollar repayment record on his desk.
After the adviser’s review ended, the original had been returned to him.
“I didn’t drive you away.”
“I just stopped cleaning up your messes.”
“And that piece of paper? Mireille doesn’t even want the money back. Why are you still keeping it?”
Hadrian slid the repayment record into an envelope.
“To prove she paid it.”
“Who still cares?”
“I do.”
He hung up and sent the adviser one final email.
He asked that the record of my repayment be officially added to the internal family file from that year.
Not to send me the money again, and not as leverage to ask to see me.
Just to put the overlooked name back where it should have always been.
Three days later, the adviser replied.
The record had been corrected.
In the field for the repayment of the two hundred thousand dollars, it no longer read: *jointly borne by the underboss’s household.*
Now there was only one name there.
Mireille Greco.
Hadrian forwarded the confirmation email to me.
There was no message attached.
I read it, saved it in an old accounts folder, and replied:
*Received.*
The same two words I had sent to Chloe.
Not forgiveness. Not a new beginning.
Only an acknowledgment that I had seen it.