My Husband Framed Me. I Took It All. novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: The Ballroom

Wendt Capital held its quarterly dinner in the Pfister ballroom every November.

I had picked the flowers for seven years.

Rosalyn got me a dress from her daughter's closet, a deep blue sheath with a high neck and a long sleeve, and I stood in front of Soren's bathroom mirror turning from side to side.

The woman in the glass had a hollow face and hard eyes.

"You look like a woman who's coming to collect," Soren said from the doorway.

"I look like I've been in prison."

"That too."

He drove me downtown in the grey sedan, and he wore a suit I hadn't known he owned.

Rosalyn met us in the lobby with her tin of peppermints and a briefcase.

"One rule," she said. "You let me start."

"What if I want to start?"

"Then you'll have a worse time."

We walked into the ballroom at 7:40.

Eighty people sat at round tables under chandeliers.

Investors, their wives, the old families who had trusted Lars, and then trusted Carter because Lars did.

Carter stood at the podium in a tuxedo.

He was in the middle of a sentence about "continuity in a time of loss."

The sentence died on his tongue.

Every head turned toward the door.

Somebody dropped a fork.

I walked down the middle aisle between the tables with my chin up and my hands at my sides.

Soren stayed a step behind me.

Rosalyn went ahead and pulled out a chair at the front table, where my name card sat in its silver holder.

Nobody had taken it away.

Carter hadn't thought of it.

"Good evening," I said. "I'm sorry I'm late."

A woman in pearls whispered, "Is that her?"

"Annika," Carter said into the microphone, in the voice of a man talking to a skittish horse. "Honey. I'm so glad you're safe. But this isn't the place."

"It's exactly the place."

I stopped at the front table.

"I own forty percent of Wendt Capital," I said. "Every one of you has my signature on your account statement. I wanted to hear how the firm is doing."

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