Fated to My Cruel CEO novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: Florence

Florence Eddings slipped in and closed the study door behind her.

She is fifty-eight, with a gray bun and reading glasses on a chain, and she has worked for my father for thirty years.

She was the first person who ever gave me a lunch box at the Carrow house.

"How long have you been here?" I whispered.

"I saw the car on the lane. I came in through the kitchen."

She looked at the open safe, then at the bag on my shoulder.

"You found the box."

"You knew it was there."

"Sit down, Mona, before you fall down."

I sat on the arm of the leather chair.

Florence stayed standing, with her hands folded in front of her.

"Your father told me in the first month," she said.

"Every letter that went into the slot in the front hall, I was to take to him."

She swallowed.

"He said you were writing to a boy who had hurt you."

"I was writing to a boy who was in a youth center."

"I know that now."

"You knew then. You were the one he gave them to."

She flinched, and I was glad of it.

"I was thirty-eight years old with a mortgage," she said. "I told myself he was a good father. I told myself he had reasons."

"Sixty-one letters."

"I never read one. I swear that to you."

"That makes it better?"

"No."

She took off her glasses and held them in her hand.

"I'm not here to ask you to forgive me. I'm here because he's going to hurt your friend, and I would like to stop him."

My head came up.

"What friend?"

"The man in the car on the lane. Mr. Rhodes."

"How do you know about him?"

"Because I make your father's calls, Mona."

She straightened her glasses.

"For thirty years I have booked every dinner and mailed every check and kept the books he told me not to keep."

She lowered her voice even though the house was empty.

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