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1Bryn“Oh, come on!”
I stuck my fingers under the beige twine and yanked, but it wouldn’t release. Digging my nails into one of the knots, I cursed the manicurist who told me the short, sporty look was trendy for this season. No matter how much I pulled, poked, or prodded, I couldn’t get the twine off the packaging. It was beyond me why a butcher felt the need to bind up a roast so tightly. It wasn’t like it was going to escape at this point.
Glancing over at the clock, I saw my time was dwindling away. When I first came up with this plan, it seemed like such a good idea. Silly me, I didn’t take into account the need to wrestle the roast free before I would be able to put it in the oven. The battle had already put a significant dent in the time I had to prepare dinner. If it didn’t get it in soon, Justin would come home to a less-than-romantic assortment of takeout Chinese. Granted, at this point I was almost ready to take the knock against me in the romance department if it meant not dealing with this massive chunk of meat.
But I was never one to give up that easily. Some people called it stubbornness. I called it… well, stubbornness. But I thought of it in a more positive way. Something closer to persistence.
Wrenching open the junk drawer, I dug through the odds and ends of life that ended up tucked there. My search for kitchen shears came up dry. It didn’t surprise me. The scissors had a way of climbing out of the drawer and walking away from the kitchen. At least, that’s the way Justin would tell it, considering he insisted he never touched the things and couldn’t understand why they kept showing up on his desk.
Letting out a sigh, I left the offending roast on the counter and headed for Justin’s office. Crowded into one of the two extra bedrooms in my little house, the office was where he buried himself in work. He spent hours locked away trying to get to the next level. That was how he described it. I wasn’t entirely sure what he meant. He wanted to make more money and be more successful.
I was proud of him. We were trying to build our lives together, and he was working so hard to make it happen for us.
The door to the office was shut, but it wasn’t locked. I stepped inside and glanced at the desk. The scissors weren’t there. Sifting through the papers piled on top, I still didn’t find them. They had to be there. I didn’t have them, and they weren’t in the kitchen or living room. I opened the first drawer but didn’t find them. The second drawer was files and papers. I was closing it when I noticed a particular file.
I paused. Why would he have that in here?
Taking the file out, I checked the label, just to make sure I was seeing it right. Justin didn’t have an account in that bank. But I did. The account my mother set up for me that held my entire inheritance, everything she had worked so hard to build up for me before she died.
My stomach sank and my hands shook as I flipped the file open. I went through the papers not believing what I was seeing. Rage bubbled up inside me, and my eyes blurred. This couldn’t possibly be what I thought it was. I went back to the first page and read through them again.
He’d stolen my entire inheritance.
I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream and break things. I wanted to storm back in the kitchen and throw the roast out the window. But before I could do anything, the doors to the office opened and Justin walked in.
“What are you doing in here?” he asked.
I looked at him incredulously. “Are you seriously going to try to be angry with me right now? This is my house. Don’t forget that. I can go anywhere I please. Especially now that I know what’s been happening right under my own roof.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Don’t act dumb,” I said. “Don’t add to how much you’ve been insulting my intelligence and disrespecting me by pretending you don’t know what’s going on. I was in the kitchen acting like an absolute idiot trying to make you a special dinner to show how much I appreciate all the hard work you’ve been doing. But the scissors were missing, yet again. So, I came in here to find them, and look what I found instead.”
I shoved the papers into his chest, and Justin stumbled back a couple of steps before taking them in looking down at them. His eyes widened. “Bryn, let me explain.”
“There’s nothing for you to explain,” I said. “You can’t possibly talk your way out of draining my entire inheritance and then losing it all. You stole from me. You took everything I had. I thought we were trying to build a future together.”
