I Logged In As The CEO's Mother And Crushed His Favorite Girl novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: The Bid Opening

I didn't sleep.

At seven I went down to breakfast and sat at the head of the long table with a cup of coffee.

The housekeeper set a second place at my right hand, for Chase.

At eight she took it away again without a word.

Holly came down at half past in jeans and a sweater, with the green sketchbook under her arm.

"He's not coming," she said. It wasn't a question.

"No."

She sat. She looked at her toast.

"Mrs. Pembroke, I've been thinking about Riverbend all night. About the bid."

"Tell me."

"The city's selling the rail-yard parcel. Sealed bids. Pembroke's bid has been ready since March." She opened the sketchbook to the back pages, where she'd scribbled numbers in pencil. "Three times this year, a company called Lakeshore Partners has come in on a city parcel one percent above us. Not two. Not a half. One percent. Every time."

"Someone's telling them our number."

"Someone who sees Chase's email."

We looked at each other.

"Can we prove it?" I said.

"Not with what I've got." She chewed her lip. "But we could test it."

That was the Holly I knew.

In college she caught a girl down the hall stealing her yogurt.

She wrote a fake name on a fake cup and waited to hear it said out loud.

"Tell me what you need," I said.

"One email. From you to Chase. A new bid number for the parcel, one nobody else would ever pick."

"Such as?"

She grinned for the first time that morning.

"Two hundred and eleven million, four hundred and four thousand, and four dollars."

"Why fours?"

"Because if Lakeshore bids one percent over that, it'll end in a number nobody could ever guess on their own."

I wrote the email myself at the kitchen table.

Chase. The board has revised the rail-yard bid to $211,404,004. Do not share outside your office.

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