My Billionaire Boss Dared Me to Say No, So I Locked the Door novel · Chapter 15 of 24
Chapter 15: Thirty Thousand
"Start with the truck," Bartek said the next morning, over the toast.
Ingmar looked up from the coffee he had made himself.
It was bad coffee, and Bartek had drunk it without a word.
"What truck?" Ingmar asked.
"My father's. A 1998 Ford, green, a hundred and ninety thousand miles. It's been sitting in the lot behind the bakery since he died." Bartek set down the toast. "I owe your aunt's lawyer twenty-two thousand dollars. I'm not going to owe it to him a day longer than I have to."
"I will pay it."
"You will not," Bartek said.
"It would take me the time it takes to sign a check."
"That's why you won't." Bartek met his eyes across the kitchen island. "If you pay, I'm still the man you paid. I need to give it back with my own hands, so that when I stand in that boardroom, nobody can say I'm owned."
Ingmar was quiet.
"There is a distinction," he said slowly, "between pride and policy."
"There is. This is policy."
"It is also pride."
"Both," Bartek said. "I get both."
By noon he had sold the truck to a dealer on Archer Avenue for six thousand dollars.
He stood in the lot while the man counted bills, and put one hand on the green hood, and felt it go.
His father had taught him to drive in this truck, in an empty parking lot at Midway, swearing at the clutch.
He kept the key ring.
It had a small brass saint on it, Saint Christopher, which his father had worn thin with his thumb.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of My Billionaire Boss Dared Me to Say No, So I Locked the Door are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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