After He Gave My Wedding Away, I Built My Empire novel · Chapter 20 of 24
Chapter 20: Say It Out Loud
Rowena did not answer at first.
She stood at the foot of the altar with the bouquet and the envelope, and she looked at Linnea without hurry.
"Say what?" she said.
"What you did."
"I'm quite sure the whole room has the gist."
"We want it from you," the baker said, from the front row. She had risen, and the potter rose beside her.
My mother had stood too, and my father, and then Hattie's whole row.
Behind them a hundred of Rowena's own people sat in their good clothes and kept their phones where they were.
Rowena glanced at the officiant.
He looked back at her, and for once he had nothing to say.
She looked at the doors.
Colin was gone.
"Very well," she said.
She set her bouquet down on the altar step, and the envelope slid off it.
"I take companies from people who don't deserve them," she said, in her ordinary voice. "That is the entire secret."
"Go on," Linnea said.
"Founders are sentimental. They hold a thing for ten years and call it a family. They leave it to rot because they cannot bear to charge what it's worth." She spread her hands. "I buy it. I make it a business. I'm the only one in this room who ever has."
"You bought us by getting engaged to us," the potter said.
"Colin did that. I merely chose." Rowena's eyes came around to me. "You were the best of the four, Cassandra. You were also the politest. Do you know that you thanked me in writing?"
"I remember."
"You thanked me for the wedding, and I sat in my office and I read it twice. I thought, how simple. How very simple."
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