He Bet My Life and Lost Me Instead novel · Chapter 27 of 32

Chapter 27: The Same Room

Dylan asked for one thing, and it was the room.

"The same one," he said. "With everyone who was in it."

I knew which room he meant.

It was the large conference room on the eleventh floor, where fifty people had listened to Marco's recording while Dylan told them it had been edited.

I said yes and set it for Friday at nine.

By nine, three hundred people had come, and the ones who couldn't fit stood in the hall with their coffee.

Marco stood against the back wall in a clean chef's jacket he had bought for the restaurant.

He raised his eyebrows at me.

I shook my head very slightly. He was not to heckle.

Sam stood beside him in uniform, because he had a shift at noon.

Dylan walked to the front without his jacket and tie.

His hands were out of the gauze now, shiny and pink across both palms.

He didn't use a podium or notes.

"My name is Dylan Mercer, and until Wednesday I ran this company," he said. "I put smoke into Nina Doyle's rescue inhaler at the retreat. I did it for a bet."

Nobody moved.

"I told the paramedic on the phone that she was doing it to herself. I told you the recording was edited. I knew it wasn't."

A woman near the front put her hand over her mouth.

"For six months I let a woman I trusted give Nina empty inhalers. I paid for them. I called Nina's attacks hysteria to her face, and I called them hysteria to this board."

He stopped and looked down at his hands.

"On the day she stood in this room and played the truth, I had security walk her out with a psychiatric hold. Some of you carried that paper."

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