My Groom Chose His Mistress, Not Knowing I Was the CEO novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: The Gala Speech

Margaret's gala was at the Brantley Foundation hall on Fifth Avenue, and she had filled it with three hundred people she owned.

Eleanor and I walked in at nine, side by side, with Jack a step behind us.

The string quartet stopped playing.

Margaret stood at the top of the staircase in silver silk with her pearls at her throat.

She smiled down at us.

"Eleanor," she said. "How good of you to come. And Miss Bannon. Or should I say Chair?"

"Say what you invited us here to hear," Eleanor said.

Margaret descended three steps.

"Friends," she said, lifting her glass, "I have asked the Dunhills here tonight to settle an old matter in front of people who matter."

The room turned.

"Thirty-one years ago, I worked for Eleanor. When I left her office, she paid me fifty thousand dollars in cash." She let that hang. "Ask her why."

A murmur ran through the guests.

Eleanor leaned on her cane, which she did not need, and said nothing.

"She paid me to be quiet," Margaret said. "About what she did to a young woman in her employ. I have kept her secret for three decades. She has repaid me by destroying my family in the papers."

She spread her hands.

"I think the city should hear it."

I felt Jack go still behind me.

I felt Eleanor's hand close on my wrist.

"Let her," she whispered.

"Say what I did," Eleanor said aloud.

Margaret smiled.

"You know what you did."

"I know what you took."

Eleanor reached into her bag and drew out a thin yellowed envelope.

She held it up.

"This is a letter from March of that year," she said. "In my own hand. It says, 'To the clerk at the third desk: I have a record of every client file you copied. I will not report you to the police if you leave today and never use them.' The fifty thousand was severance, so you wouldn't starve."

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