“May I make one more request?” Gretchen asked, pulling her purse strap over her shoulder. Her teeth nearly cracked under the clenched pressure of having to beg him like Bob fucking Cratchit for another piece of coal on the fire.
“Of course.”
He actually fucking smiled when he said it. Gretchen tried to match his tone, even though her internal organs were boiling in rage. “I would like my legal clinic to remain open here in Nashville. I’m going to offer the job to my assistant. She’ll need to hire a new attorney, perhaps two or three. I’m going to encourage her to submit a grant application to the foundation to help make that possible. Please don’t block its consideration.”
“You understand that just submitting the application does not guarantee that it will be approved.”
Oh, he was reveling in this moment. Treating her as if she had no idea how the foundation worked. Like the undeserving outsider that she was.
“I understand,” she said.
Evan stood and rounded his desk. He extended his hand as if to shake hers, and the absurdity of it brought a bubble of laughter from her throat. She shook her head. “Fuck you, Evan.”
The door crashed open. Gretchen whipped around. Evan let out a startled blasphemy as Uncle Jack stormed into the room.
“What the fuck is going on here?”
“Nothing that concerns you, Jack,” Evan said.
“Everything in this entire building concerns me, Evan.” Jack looked directly at Gretchen. His eyes were bloodshot and ringed with dark circles. “I saw your car. What’s going on?”
“Just finishing up some business,” Evan said before Gretchen could respond.
“What kind of business?”
Evan had crept back around the desk to pick up the contract, presumably to hide it from Jack’s view.
“What is that?” Jack demanded, swooping toward Evan like a hawk to prey.
Dispassionately, Evan shrugged and handed the document to Jack. “I suppose you’ll find out soon enough.”
Gretchen inched toward the door while Jack’s back was turned. But he was a fast reader, and it didn’t take a deep dive into the words to understand what she’d done. She’d barely made it outside Evan’s office before Jack whipped around again and stormed after her.
He held the contract in his clenched fist. “What the hell is this, Gretchen? Did you really sign this?”
Sarah was at her desk, watching them over the rim of her glasses, her lips pursed, her expression sour. Gretchen searched her heart for the ill will Sarah had engendered, but all Gretchen could muster was sympathy for the woman. She’d sold her soul to a man who would never repay her loyalty. When it inevitably came out that she and Evan were having an affair, he wouldn’t protect her. She would find herself in the same place Gretchen now stood—forgotten, pushed aside, defeated.
“We struck a deal,” Gretchen told Jack. She plucked the contract from his fingers, walked with a calmness she didn’t feel to Sarah’s desk, and handed the rumpled papers to her. “Please give this back to Evan, and make sure a copy is sent to me.”
Jack followed at her heels, shouting questions. “You made a deal to give up your inheritance? Your future shares in the company? Why the hell would you agree to this?”
She ignored him, as well as the startled stares of other staffers who’d poked their heads out of offices to see what all the commotion was about. Gretchen made it to the elevators and hit the button for the ground floor.
“Gretchen, what are you doing?” Jack demanded.
“I’m leaving.” The door slid open with a quiet ding.
Jack followed her inside. “Where are you going? Why would you sign that document?”
The doors slid shut, locking them in temporary privacy. “Because I had to,” she said, facing him directly for the first time. “He wouldn’t drop the charges against Colton unless I did.”
Jack stumbled back a step. “You can’t be serious.”
“I’m not going to let Colton suffer because of me and our family.”
“That is blackmail, Gretchen. Why would you—”
The elevator came to a stop. Jack jammed his finger into the close-door button to hold it shut.
“Let me out, Jack. I have a plane to catch.”
“A plane to where?”
“D.C.” Not that she’d warned Jorge or anything that she was coming. But he had invited her out to help, so . . .
Jack made an indecipherable noise. Gretchen gripped his wrist and pulled his hand away from the button. As the doors opened, she walked out, head held high but her heart breaking.