He smiled.
“And perhaps tonight, certain people who doubted me will finally understand their mistake.”
Then the ballroom doors opened.
I walked inside.
I wore a deep-red couture gown and an emerald necklace.
Ryan walked behind me.
Andrew Pierce from Northshore walked beside him.
Blake stared.
“What are you doing here?”
I kept walking.
He grabbed the microphone.
“Security, remove her.”
Andrew stepped forward.
“Mr. Bradford.”
Blake stopped.
“Andrew?”
“Yes.”
Blake looked behind him.
“Where is the chairperson from Sterling Crest? You said they were attending.”
Andrew glanced at me.
Then bowed his head slightly.
“She is.”
The ballroom fell silent.
Blake looked from him to me.
“No.”
Ryan stepped forward.
“Evelyn Montgomery is chairwoman and controlling shareholder of Sterling Crest Holdings. Sterling Crest owns Northshore Ventures.”
Blake’s face lost all color.
I walked up the steps to the stage.
“You wanted to meet the person behind your investment.”
He stared at me.
“You?”
“Yes.”
Margaret stood so quickly that her chair fell over.
“This is impossible.”
I turned toward her.
“You told me I was fortunate to enter your family because my bloodline had never seen wealth.”
She said nothing.
Blake grabbed my arm.
“You set me up.”
I pulled away.
“No. I gave your company an investment condition. You chose how to meet it.”
“The eight million—”
“Is currently frozen pending compliance review.”
His eyes widened.
“What?”
“Some of the funds came from questionable private sources. The banks flagged the transaction.”
Blake began shaking.
“You can’t freeze it.”
“I didn’t. Compliance did.”
“You have to release it.”
“No.”
His voice cracked.
“If that money doesn’t come back, I’m finished.”
I looked at him.
“You were already finished. You simply didn’t know it.”
He dropped his voice.
“Eve… please.”
“That isn’t my name.”
His eyes filled with panic.
“Evelyn.”
I looked around the ballroom.
“This is the man who told me I should be grateful to pay him three thousand dollars a month for the privilege of being his wife.”
Murmurs spread.
Blake stepped back.
Margaret began crying.
“We made a mistake.”
“A mistake?”
I looked at her.
“You tried to turn me into your emergency cash flow.”
“It was just household responsibility.”
“No. It was greed dressed up as tradition.”
Vincent Russo’s representatives were becoming visibly agitated in the back of the ballroom.
Blake noticed.
He turned toward me desperately.
“Please release the escrow.”
“I cannot release money under compliance investigation.”
“They’ll destroy me.”
“Then perhaps you shouldn’t have borrowed millions from dangerous people to protect an image.”
He fell to his knees.
Guests gasped.
“I’m sorry.”
I looked down at him.
Only days earlier, he had told me to know my place.
Now he was kneeling at my feet.
“I loved you,” he said.
“No, Blake. You loved feeling superior to me.”
“That’s not true.”
“If I had really been the woman you thought I was, you would have financially drained her and called it marriage.”
His face collapsed.
I handed the microphone back to the event staff.
“My lawyers will finish the divorce.”
Then I walked out.
