My Best Friend Ripped Off My Veil, So I Took Back Every Dollar novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: One Thing to Carry

Shane's POV

The cardiac floor at Mission smelled of floor wax and bad coffee.

I sat in the family room for two hours with my hat in my hands.

Holly had gone home with Annette and Stephanie, because there was nothing she could do there, and because she'd said she would sooner eat glass than sit in a waiting room with his family.

I had told her I'd stay.

I didn't tell her why.

At two, Dalton's mother came out and touched my sleeve.

"He's awake," she said. "A stent. They say he'll be fine. He asked for you."

"Not for Dalton?"

"Dalton went home to sleep," she said, and her voice was dry. "He's thirty-one."

I went in.

My uncle lay propped on three pillows with a tube in his arm.

He looked smaller than he had on the carpet, and his color was back, which I resented.

I had worked for this man for eleven years.

He had paid for my trade school and given me a crew at twenty-five.

He had called me son at every Christmas dinner, and I had liked it.

"Sit," he said.

I stayed standing.

"You took my books," he said. His voice was a rasp. "I would have done the same at your age."

"Yes, sir."

"I'm not going to fight you about it. I'm going to make you an offer."

He waited until I looked at him.

"Dalton's finished," he said. "I know it. His mother knows it. The board would have you back on a vote."

"I don't work for the company."

"I'm saying you would be vice president. Not of a crew. Of the company."

I said nothing.

"You're the only one of the lot of you who ever learned the business from the ground up," he said. "That is not a small thing to me."

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