I Logged In As The CEO's Mother And Crushed His Favorite Girl novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: The Hearing

Holly read it twice. Then she laughed, short and hard.

"They're suing us," she said, "for catching them."

Ellis read it over her shoulder.

"Go," he said. "I'll pack the paintings. Go home and win."

He walked us out to the car at midnight, down the steep street, in the yellow light.

At the car he hugged Holly for a long time.

Then he hugged me.

The council hearing was the second Tuesday of December.

City Hall again, but not the gray room with folding chairs.

The real chamber. Wood paneling, a horseshoe of desks, fifty aldermen, a gallery that went up in tiers.

It was full.

The Riverbend crew had come in their work jackets and taken the whole back row.

Two local news cameras stood in the aisle.

Lakeshore's man sat at the witness table in the same camel coat.

He had a lawyer on each side of him and a stack of glossy binders.

He spoke first.

He spoke very well.

"Pembroke Group won the rail-yard parcel by manipulating a public bid," he said. "They called it theft. That isn't business. That's a trap."

A few heads nodded in the horseshoe.

"And now," he said, "on that parcel, a retaining wall nearly fell into the Chicago River."

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