After the Lease Expired, I Married a Wealthy Old Man, but My Hands Froze at His Lawyer’s Words

The morning after Richard’s funeral, his lawyer told me that after five years of marriage I was receiving nothing from him, and held out an envelope. Her name was Nino, and I knew this because I had spent my life in her house, under her rules and her silent gaze. But that morning, for the first time, I felt that perhaps she did not know me at all.

I stood by the window, holding Emily’s wooden king. Richard had given this little figure to my daughter five years earlier and told her that the king must always be protected last. Now traces of Emily’s teeth could be seen on the wooden surface. As a child, she often chewed things when she was afraid.

“Mrs. Nino, please sit down,” the lawyer, Mr. Levan, told me.

“Not even twenty-four hours have passed since the funeral. What do you mean, I am receiving nothing?”

He raised his eyes.

“Exactly what I told you. Your name is not written in the will.”

“That is impossible. This house is my house. Richard was my husband.”

“Marriage does not give you automatic rights to property.”

His calm voice frightened me most of all. And I remembered the first day I came to this house: coffee beans scattered on the kitchen marble, my old bag, and Emily’s face reddened with fever.

At that time, we were threatened with eviction from the apartment because of unpaid rent. I needed medicine for Emily. I worked as a saleswoman in a store, and in the evenings I cleaned Richard’s enormous house. He was a seventy-two-year-old widower, and I was a thirty-five-year-old woman, tired and full of fear.

“I know that I am much older than you,” he told me once in the library, when the clock showed six, “but I think about you. I want you to stay with me. Marry me.”

At that moment, his words seemed to me like a bridge. On the other side were my child, medicine, and a roof.

“Do you love me?” I asked.

Richard looked at me for a long time.

“At first your hardship brought me to you. Then your heart did.”

I agreed.

For five years, he taught Emily chess. When the child had a high fever, he sat beside her bed all night. When he could no longer walk, I took him into the garden in a chair, and every time he repeated the same joke:

“If I ever run away, catch me.”

“You can no longer take even two steps,” I would answer, unable to hold back my laughter.

Now he was gone. In his study, only the leather armchair, an unopened watch, and a blot of pen ink left on the desk remained.

“Why are you saying that I invented everything?” I asked Levan.

The lawyer placed the briefcase on his knees.

“Because Richard knew that you would believe all this.”

“What?”

He took out a sealed envelope. A small black horse was engraved on the wax seal—the figure Richard always hid in his palm while playing with Emily.

“Open it, Mrs. Nino. After this, you will understand who your husband really was.”

My fingers touched the seal. Levan held his breath, and I slowly lifted the edge of the envelope…

The wax seal broke, and a sound rang through the room as if something had finally collapsed. Inside the envelope lay one letter, a small memory card, and an old photograph.

In the photograph, a young Richard stood by a garage, holding a baby in his arms. On the back was written: “I saw you only once, but I could not forget you.”

“Who is this?” I asked.

Levan lowered his head.

“Read the letter first.”

I recognized Richard’s handwriting immediately.

“Nino, if you are reading this, I can no longer explain to you why I spoke to you that day. You thought that I helped you. In truth, I needed you too, but the reason you will learn may make you forgive me or may make you never forgive me.”

Coldness poured into my chest.

“You knew?” I asked Levan.

“Only partly. He instructed me to prepare everything for your and Emily’s safety.”

“Then why did he leave me nothing?”

The lawyer looked at the memory card.

“Perhaps because the property was not what you thought it was.”

I put the card into an old video camera. Richard’s pale face appeared on the screen.

“Nino, before you see this, they may already have told you that I deceived you. But you do not yet know the most important thing. The man who was waiting for my death has already found your address…”

A door opened on the screen, and the video suddenly stopped…

Richard’s face remained in the frozen frame of the video. Raindrops ran down the window behind him, while the black horse figure lay on the table exactly like the one I now held in my hand.

“Continue,” I told Levan.

“The file is damaged.”

“You told me that everything had been prepared!”

“The rest is here.”

He took out another sheet and placed it on the table. At the top was written: “The Confession of Richard Hale.”

“Who was the child in the photograph?” I asked.

Levan waited several seconds before answering.

“Your late husband, Giorgi.”

My breath caught.

“No. Giorgi was an orphan. He grew up in an orphanage.”

“That is what everyone thought. Richard found him twenty-nine years ago, but by then it was already too late. He had a son, but to save his own business Richard paid the mother money and sent the child to relatives. Then that family rejected him. Giorgi ended up in an orphanage.”

The paper slipped from my hand.

“Did he know that Giorgi was his son?”

“Yes. And he knew that you would become his widow before he first proposed marriage to you.”

“So everything was staged? The job, the house, his love?”

Levan lowered his eyes.

“The first meeting—no. Your hardship—yes. He knew that you could not refuse. But then… he became entangled in a real feeling.”

The second part of the recording began. Richard’s voice was hoarse.

“Nino, I did not fake those nights when I sat beside Emily’s bed. Nor those days when you wheeled my chair into the garden. I did not leave the property to you because my surname would be a danger to you. Everything belongs to Emily, and you cannot be her guardian. Levan has a trust fund that no one can touch until she becomes an adult.”

I looked at Levan.

“Why did you not tell me this from the beginning?”

“Because then your husband’s brother, Victor, would have taken everything from you in court. He wanted Richard’s property to pass to you so that he could declare the marriage a transaction.”

“And now?”

The lawyer took another document from his pocket.

“Now Victor has already filed a lawsuit against Emily’s trust. He has a witness who says that Richard was not of sound mind before his death.”

At that very moment, my telephone rang. An unknown number appeared on the screen.

“Do not answer,” Levan told me.

But I had already picked it up.

“Mrs. Nino?” a man whispered. “If you want your daughter to remain safe, stop trusting the lawyer and come to the old railway station tomorrow at ten in the morning…”

The line went dead. Levan’s face turned gray. And for the first time I understood that Richard’s greatest secret was hidden not in his past, but in his enemies…