They Gave Me the Service Entrance, I Built My Own Palace

Chapter 8: You Never Knew Me to Begin With

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“That was a keepsake from my mother, not fabric for you to make Sloane feel special.”

I cut him off, my voice sharp and distinct. “You had no right to touch it.”

The line went quiet for a beat.

Then Sloane broke into sobs.

“I knew I shouldn’t have suggested it… Mara must think I’m trying to steal her wedding. Grant, forget it. This is all my fault. I don’t deserve to have everyone remember the year I was held up by all of you.”

Grant’s voice softened instantly for her. “Don’t cry. This isn’t your fault.”

When he spoke to me again, his tone was ice-cold.

“Mara, do you really have to make this so ugly?”

I stared at the pattern on the design mock-up, chopped into pieces.

“Get it back.”

“It’s already been made into—”

“Get it back.”

Eli, who had been sitting on the other side of the conference table, finally stood up.

He had come with me to review the schedule, but now he was frowning at me as if I were a child throwing a tantrum.

“Mara, enough. If your mother were still here, she’d want you to be more generous and gracious, not pick a fight with a sick person over some old thing.”

The room went silent.

I slowly turned to look at him.

After my mother died, Eli had helped me sort through her belongings. He knew perfectly well that quilt was the last thing I had left of her.

But I didn’t cry.

“If the thing they’d cut up today was something your birth mother left you, would you still be this gracious, Eli?”

Grant’s voice came through the phone, hard and cold. “Mara, do you have to be this hurtful?”

Eli’s face changed at once.

“How can you bring my mother into this?”

I gave a short laugh.

“So when it’s you, it’s not just some old thing.”

He stared at me, shocked, as if seeing me for the first time.

“You’ve changed so much I don’t even recognize you.”