Chapter 21: Shareholders

Claire's POV

Tarrant Freight held its annual meeting in the ballroom of the Dayton Convention Center.

Six hundred shareholders sat in rows of folding chairs, most of them drivers who had come in their good jackets.

Reporters stood along the back wall with their phones up.

I sat at the long table on the stage with a gavel I had been told to hold like I meant it.

Rafe sat on my left with the agenda.

Hazel was at the hotel with the nanny.

The company's lawyer sat in the front row with her phone in her hand.

"Item six," Rafe said quietly. "Questions from shareholders of record."

"Is he here?"

"Third microphone."

I looked.

Dean stood in the aisle in his funeral suit with a laminated badge clipped to his lapel.

It read HARLAN FAMILY HOLDINGS.

He was smiling the church smile.

"Mr. Harlan," I said into the microphone. "The floor is yours."

"Thank you, Madam Chair."

He took a slow breath and looked out over the room.

"My name is Dean Harlan. I'm a shareholder, a father and, for six years, the husband of the woman at that table."

A murmur went through the chairs.

"I came to say that the chair of this company is not fit to be its chair."

He waited.

"She was a school bookkeeper.

"She walked out on me and our newborn daughter and took her to a hotel suite paid for by this company.

"She is living there with the man you pay to run it."

Several heads turned toward Rafe.

Rafe's face did not change.

"I think the shareholders of Tarrant Freight deserve to ask who is paying for what," Dean said.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Desperate Housewife? No, I'm Billion-Dollar Revenge from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.