Chapter 16: The Board

On Thursday Matt drove me down to the Strip District in his father's suit jacket.

"You don't have to come up," I said in the lobby.

"I'm not coming up." He sat down on a white leather bench built for someone half his size. "I'm sitting."

"You look ridiculous."

"I look like a husband." He folded his arms. "Go wreck them, lady."

The elevator opened on the floor where I'd been fired.

Seven weeks ago it had been a party.

Now the display tower was gone, and the floor was stacked with brown cardboard boxes stamped RECALL in red.

Everybody who worked there stopped and stared at me.

Assistants, chemists I'd hired, the girl from accounts who used to bring me cupcakes.

The executive suite still looked down over all of it through a wall of glass.

Ian sat at the head of the table in a gray suit.

Tori sat at his right hand, in a cream blazer, with her gold necklace and no expression at all.

The investors' man sat at the far end beside a thin woman with a laptop, the auditor.

Two more investors watched from a screen on the wall.

"Sweetheart," Ian said, standing up. "You didn't have to come all this way."

"I did, actually."

"If this is about the shares, my lawyer..."

"Sit down, Ian," the investors' man said.

Ian sat.

I didn't.

I opened my bag and put three things on the long white table.

The wristband.

The discharge papers.

The gray notebook, open to the page.

"You fired me for an email sent at eleven fifty-two that night," I said. "I was under anesthesia. Ask Ian who drove me."

Ian laughed, a soft, sad sound for the screen.

"Alice. Sweetheart. You could have scheduled it from your phone."

"I was unconscious, Ian. You kissed me goodbye in the hallway at nine. You said you had a dinner."

Keep reading free with an account. Start I Married a Stranger to Ruin Them from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.