Fated to My Cruel CEO novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: The Anniversary

The Toledo Club ballroom held four hundred people on Saturday night, and every one of them was whispering.

There were bankers in tuxedos and board members with their wives, and a row of reporters along the back wall.

A banner hung over the stage in gold letters.

*CARROW PACKAGING, SIXTY YEARS.*

I stood beside Ansel at the edge of the dance floor in a dark red dress.

His hand was on the small of my back, and I could feel it through the silk, warm and absolutely steady.

My father stood on the stage in his best suit with a champagne glass and his church pin.

He gave a toast about his father, about the plant, about family.

He was very good at it.

Colt stood at his shoulder with a bruise on his cheekbone, staring at the floor.

"And now," my father said, smiling, "a few words from our newest partner, Mr. Ansel Rhodes."

A rustle went through the room.

Ansel let go of my back.

He walked up the steps in his charcoal suit and took the microphone from my father's hand.

The two men stood a foot apart.

Neither smiled.

"Good evening," Ansel said.

A large screen glowed to life behind him.

It showed a page of faded handwriting.

"In the nine years before the fire, Greer House had thirty-one children."

He let it sit.

"They ate a lot of oatmeal. Here is where their oatmeal money went."

The room went completely silent.

He read the first receipt.

A church in Sylvania, four hundred dollars, deposited on a Tuesday.

The matching transfer, to an account in the name L. Carrow, on Thursday.

He read the next one.

A widow, eleven dollars a month, for nine years.

A woman at the front table put her hand over her mouth.

On stage, my father's smile had not moved, and his fingers had gone white around the glass.

"Six hundred and twelve thousand dollars," Ansel said. "A thousand and sixty-one pages. The auditor was due the Monday after the fire."

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