Profit Prophecy novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: Thirty-One Million

I bought Gerald Maddox's debt on Monday morning, one hour before Preston's deadline.

I put in everything I had, one point nine million dollars.

Veronica carried the rest of the four point one as a loan to me.

"You're buying his paper with my money," she said, signing the transfer.

"With our money."

"You're sleeping with me and you're buying a man's debt because his daughter wouldn't say yes to you."

She capped the pen.

"I'm not jealous."

"I'm amazed."

"Who told you about Roxy?"

"Dex has a mouth." She slid the papers into a folder. "Go get him."

Gerald arrived at eleven.

He'd been summoned by a courier with a letter on Taliaferro letterhead.

He came in with a lawyer on one side and a nervous man from the club's board on the other.

The Taliaferro office had a glass wall that faced the open floor.

Fifteen employees sat at their desks pretending not to look.

I stood at the head of the long table with my hands in my pockets.

Dex leaned in the corner with a stack of ledgers, wearing a tie for the first time in his life.

"Mr. Brannigan," Gerald said, and his voice had a tremor in it he hid well.

"What is this about?"

"I was told Ms. Taliaferro wanted to discuss an extension."

"Ms. Taliaferro sold your note."

"To whom?"

"To me."

Nobody in the room breathed.

Gerald looked at his lawyer, then at Veronica, who sat at the other end with her legs crossed and her hands folded.

"That's impossible," he said. "That's a mistake."

"It's recorded."

I took the folder from the table and tossed it down the length of the wood.

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