Chapter 20 - Gavin’s Last LieGavin wanted one private conversation before accepting a plea agreement.
Marlowe refused.
Then changed her mind.
Not for closure.
For herself.
They met in the mansion’s formal sitting room with Evelyn and Gavin’s lawyer nearby.
Copper remained beside Marlowe.
Gavin looked around the house.
“You changed things.”
“The locks.”
“The bedroom.”
“Yes.”
He nodded.
“I heard you removed the bed.”
“I did.”
“Why?”
Marlowe almost laughed.
“You need that explained?”
“No.”
Silence.
Then Gavin looked at Copper.
“He never liked when doors were closed.”
Marlowe stared at him.
“You remember that?”
“Of course.”
For a second they were husband and wife again.
Two people who had raised a puppy together.
Then Marlowe remembered the notebook.
The signatures.
Her mother in the wardrobe.
“You asked for this meeting.”
Gavin looked down.
“I’m pleading to fraud charges related to the first transfer and the attempted loan.”
“I know.”
“I’m also waiving any claim to the house.”
“Good.”
“I’m repaying the thirty thousand I received.”
“That isn’t all you cost me.”
“I know.”
Marlowe waited.
Gavin looked at her.
“I want you to know I didn’t marry you only for money.”
“That word ‘only’ is doing a lot of work.”
His eyes filled.
“I loved you.”
“You lied to me before our first date.”
“Yes.”
“You slept with my mother before our first date.”
“Yes.”
“You married me knowing she expected access to my trust.”
“Yes.”
“You accepted stolen money.”
“Yes.”
“You tried to build a record suggesting I was unfit.”
Gavin looked away.
“Yes.”
“Then whether you loved me is irrelevant.”
His face tightened.
“It isn’t irrelevant to me.”
“That’s the problem.”
Marlowe leaned forward.
“You keep measuring morality by your feelings.”
He looked at her.
“You think because you felt love, the actions become complicated.”
“They were complicated.”
“No.”
Her voice remained calm.
“They were difficult. There’s a difference.”
Gavin’s eyes filled.
“I could have left.”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t.”
“Because you wanted the company.”
“Partly.”
“Always partly.”
He flinched.
Marlowe continued.
“If you had told me the truth six months into our marriage, I might have hated you. But I would have believed you were capable of choosing me over the scheme.”
“I was afraid.”
“So you chose yourself.”
“Yes.”
Finally.
No excuse.
Marlowe sat back.
Gavin whispered, “I’m sorry.”
“I believe you.”
His eyes lifted.
“But I don’t forgive you.”
His face crumpled.
Marlowe felt pain.
Real pain.
Because she had loved him.
That had been real even if the marriage began as fraud.
She did not need to deny her own love in order to condemn his betrayal.
Gavin stood.
At the doorway he stopped.
“I did miss you.”
Marlowe froze.
The sentence from the day she came home.
“I said it when you walked in.”
“I remember.”
“It wasn’t fake.”
Marlowe looked at him.
“Maybe not.”
Hope flickered in his face.
Then she added:
“But everything around it was.”
He closed his eyes.
Then left.
Copper watched the door close.
Marlowe lowered herself onto the sofa.
For several minutes she cried.
Not because she wanted Gavin back.
Because she finally understood she could mourn a person and still refuse to let him return.
The next morning Gavin signed his plea agreement.
The marriage was ending.
The criminal case was almost resolved.
May you like
But Marlowe still had one final battle.
The company.
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