He Waited for Fifteen Years novel · Chapter 44 of 48

Chapter 44: The Table

The side door swung shut on him.

For a second the courtroom was silent.

Then thirty reporters stood up at once and turned to the second row.

"Ms. Ferraro! Can his wife sell the patents?"

"Is Shelby Hartley still the owner?"

"Does Ferraro Group have a deal with her?"

I didn't answer them.

I was looking at Bryant's father on the front bench.

He was buttoning his jacket, slowly, entirely unbothered that his son had just been taken out in cuffs.

He looked ready for his cue.

"He's right," I said to Nicholas, under the noise. "She owns them on paper. Nobody's ever taken her name off."

"The freeze is still on."

"A freeze lifts if the board settles. That's all it takes. Our own vote."

My mother stood up and smoothed her skirt.

"Then we'd better count the board," she said.

In August the grandmother called from Montana at six in the morning, her time.

Nicholas put her on speaker in the kitchen.

"Guilty," she said. "Every count. The jury was out two hours. The mechanic's boy sat in the front row and held his father's good hand the whole time."

Nicholas sat down at the table and didn't say anything.

"Russell looked at me when they read it," his grandmother said. "I waved."

Two days later, two of my cousins called an emergency meeting of the board.

They gave notice at five on a Thursday for nine on Monday, the way people do when they don't want you to have a weekend.

On Monday morning I was late on purpose.

When I walked in at twenty past nine, the meeting was already going.

Bryant's father stood at the foot of the table.

He wasn't a director anymore. He was a shareholder with twenty-two percent and a folder, and the two cousins had invited him to present.

The old director who had been my grandfather's friend looked at me over his glasses and said nothing.

My father sat in his chair at the head with his hands folded.

He'd been listening for twenty minutes, and his face had gone the gray I hated.

"Christina," Bryant's father said pleasantly. "We started. I hope you don't mind."

"Go on."

"I was explaining that there's a buyer." He tapped the folder. "A fund that will take the patents out of Brazos Harbor for three hundred million dollars, settle our lawsuit, and license them back to us for twenty years at a fair royalty."

"Three hundred million," I said. "For something worth one point four billion."

"For something we don't have. And can't get." He smiled at the table. "That woman is in jail, and her lawyers will drain that company dry before Christmas. Every quarter we wait, this company bleeds. I'm offering the family a rescue."

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