Chapter 14: The Shares

"This is a joke," Lyle said from the floor beside his chair. "She bakes bread."

Nobody helped him up.

"Seventeen years I've sat at this table," he said. "That stock was promised to this family."

"I am this family's eldest," Cordelia said. "It was promised to whoever I like."

Bryony looked at the old woman, and then at the eight directors watching her.

She thought of the loan, and the table, and her mother's check.

She thought that nobody in her life had ever handed her anything without a string on it.

"I'll take them," she said. "On my terms."

Holbrook's head turned.

"The shares go into my name today, not at the end of the year. You don't get to take them back if you dislike how I vote."

"Agreed," Cordelia said.

"I don't forgive you. I'm not pretending to, and I'm not going to be nice to you for them."

"I'd think less of you."

"And the first thing I vote on is an outside audit of every Draper hotel's books, by a firm none of you hired."

The room shifted.

Lyle laughed, too loudly.

"On what grounds?"

"On the grounds that your cousin has been smiling at me for a week and I don't trust a smile."

Cordelia's lawyer was already standing in the doorway with a leather folder.

He had drawn the papers before anyone arrived, and Bryony noticed it, and said nothing.

She signed in her square handwriting.

The vote was called.

Four directors raised their hands for the audit, and four kept them down.

Then the lawyer slid the share certificate across the glass, and Bryony's name on it carried thirty-one percent.

"The motion passes," the lawyer said.

Lyle stood in the doorway with his coat over his arm.

He had stopped smiling.

"You'll regret that," he said quietly, to Bryony. "Everything a baker touches goes to ash. I'll have you out of this city by Christmas."

Keep reading free with an account. Start One Kiss, the Billionaire's Bride from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.