Chapter 4 - MY SIGNATURE
I stopped breathing.
Gavin reached for the phone.
I pulled it back.
“What signature?”
“Nothing.”
“Wrong answer.”
“Olivia—”
“What did you sign in my name?”
His face tightened.
Tessa looked between us.
“You forged her signature?”
Gavin snapped, “Stay out of this.”
She laughed bitterly.
“You made me part of an eleven-million-dollar theft and now you want me out of it?”
Miriam stepped closer to Gavin.
“You should choose your next words very carefully.”
He looked trapped.
Then he did what cowards do.
He blamed me.
“You wouldn’t sign the guarantee.”
I stared at him.
“What guarantee?”
“For the expansion loan.”
“I refused that loan.”
“Yes.”
“So you forged my signature?”
“We needed the capital.”
My pulse hammered in my ears.
The loan was thirty-two million dollars.
I had rejected it because the repayment terms were reckless.
Gavin had called me timid.
He said I didn’t understand growth.
Now I understood why he stopped arguing.
He didn’t need my permission.
He had simply copied it.
Miriam’s face became ice.
“Did you submit a personal guarantee using Olivia Hart’s name?”
Gavin didn’t answer.
“That is a yes,” she said.
I felt sick.
“How much?”
He looked away.
“Gavin.”
“Thirty-two million.”
Tessa whispered, “Oh my God.”
I laughed.
Not because anything was funny.
Because sometimes rage has nowhere else to go.
“You were going to marry me tomorrow while I was unknowingly guaranteeing thirty-two million dollars of your debt?”
“You would have benefited.”
I stared at him.
“That’s your defense?”
He stepped closer.
“MercerArc was going public within two years.”
“You stole my identity.”
“I protected our future.”
“Our future?”
My voice cracked for the first time.
“You were taking another woman to Capri.”
His eyes hardened.
“That meant nothing.”
Tessa’s face changed.
“Excuse me?”
Gavin ignored her.
I almost smiled.
There it was.
The truth.
Tessa wasn’t special either.
She was simply another useful person.
Miriam touched my arm.
“We need to move quickly.”
“What happens now?”
“We notify the lender.”
Gavin’s face changed.
“No.”
“We freeze every Hart-related authorization.”
“No.”
“We convert the preferred shares.”
“Olivia.”
“And the board removes you.”
He slammed both hands onto the table.
“You can’t do this to me!”
The security chief stepped forward.
I didn’t move.
“You did this to yourself.”
For one second, Gavin looked like he might attack me.
Then his phone rang again.
This time it was his father.
Gavin stared at the screen.
I remembered something.
His parents were arriving at Ashborne House at seven in the morning for the wedding breakfast.
They believed their son was marrying into one of the oldest private investment families in the state.
They had spent months bragging about it.
Gavin rejected the call.
Then a text appeared.
DAD: Board members are here early. Something is wrong.
Miriam saw it.
“So the emergency meeting has started.”
Gavin looked at her.
“What meeting?”
She gave him a cold smile.
“The one where you lose your company.”
Then Daniel’s radio crackled.
“Mr. Reeves?”
“Yes?”
“We have two federal investigators in the lobby asking for Olivia Hart.”
I looked at Gavin.
His face was white.
May you like
But Miriam leaned toward me and whispered:
“Don’t assume they came for him.”
