Chapter 19: The Special Meeting

The special meeting was set for ten o'clock Monday, in the same eleventh-floor boardroom where Brooke had slapped me.

I wore my own navy suit and my grandmother's pearls.

Maxwell wore gray.

We came in together, and nobody in the room looked away.

Forty people sat along the walls.

I saw department heads, accountants and the woman I'd trained.

The gray-haired man from legal was there too.

They had all come on their own time.

Preston sat at the head of the table with the company's lawyer beside him.

He had taken the bandage off his cheek. He smiled at me as I sat, with every tooth.

"Let's begin," the lawyer said. "Notice of a special meeting has been properly served. The only item is the removal of the chief executive."

"Mr. Brodie moves it," Maxwell said.

"Seconded," I said.

"Before we vote," the lawyer said, "I should record the proxies. Mr. Lyle holds forty-five percent in his own name."

"And thirty," Preston said, pleasantly, "by the proxy of Ms. Heathcote, executed and delivered Saturday."

The room made a sound.

"That's seventy-five percent," the lawyer said. "I'm afraid the motion fails."

Preston slid the page across the table.

It went to the lawyer first.

Then it went along the wall, from hand to hand, with my own signature on it.

"That isn't my signature," I said.

"It looks like yours," Preston said. "Doesn't it? To everyone?"

"It looks like mine because someone was taught to copy it."

"Are you accusing me of forgery, Hazel?" His voice was warm and wounded. "In front of the staff?"

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