His Dancer, His Chains novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: Minutes

The boardroom was on the forty-first floor, with a table long enough to land a plane on.

Nine directors sat along it in dark suits.

Thaddeus Belcher sat at the head, a heavy man with silver hair.

He kept turning a gold watch on his wrist.

Nicolette sat at his right hand, in cream, with her eyes on the table.

I sat in the corner with a laptop to take the minutes.

Rafferty had told me to stay out of it.

I had told him I would stay out of it.

Neither of us believed that.

"Thank you for coming on short notice," Thaddeus said.

"We don't usually meet on a Friday morning, Thaddeus," Rafferty said. "What is this about?"

"Judgment."

Thaddeus pressed a key on the remote in front of him.

The wall screen behind him lit up with a photograph of a woman on a stage in blue light.

My stomach went to ice.

The next picture showed the same woman and a man in the middle booth, with the curtain half open.

The man was Rafferty.

Nobody in the room breathed out loud.

"This was taken at a club on Delancey last Saturday night," Thaddeus said.

"Our chief executive spent the evening with my guests. Then he stayed behind and bought a private dance."

"Those were your clients, Thaddeus."

"Who left at ten. You stayed until one."

A director coughed.

Thaddeus put the remote down.

"Rafferty, we put you in that chair after your father died because we believed you were stable."

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