My Tribal Rule Said Marry Or Matchmake novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: Receipts

Breanne moves Torrie's desk to a cubicle, Torrie reads the receipts aloud to the whole floor, and the elder calls to say Breanne's mama is telling the Hollow Torrie was dumped for stealing.

I scrolled down the column one line at a time.

The hotel was eight hundred and thirty dollars.

Two months later there was a handbag from Oak Street. Fourteen hundred and sixty.

Last week there was a jeweler on Wabash. Eighteen thousand even.

All of it on the company card.

I printed every page. When I came back from the printer room, my office was empty.

Not tidy. Empty.

Two guys from facilities were rolling my desk across the sales floor on a dolly.

My files were in a heap by the copier.

Contracts I'd negotiated line by line were stuck to the carpet with somebody's footprint on them.

Breanne stood in the middle of it all in a cream suit, pointing.

"That one goes to the cubicle by the bathrooms. The corner one."

Sheree came at me fast, phone still in her hand.

"I texted you. She walked in with a work order and Bentley's name on it."

"Put it back," I told the facilities guys.

They looked at Breanne.

Breanne looked at me and smiled.

"Bentley says you blew the Ohio deal and don't deserve a corner office. You're moving to the bullpen."

"My team sent up that price sheet?"

"It's your department. That makes it your mistake."

I walked up to her and slapped her across the face.

The whole floor went silent.

"Who said you could touch my things?"

She held her cheek and lifted her chin at me.

Then her eyes went over my shoulder, and her whole face crumpled.

Bentley was coming out of the elevator.

He took in the dolly, the files, and Breanne's hand on her face.

"Breanne, I said to notify her. Not to move her stuff."

She lowered her hand so he could see the red mark.

"I'm sorry. I only did what you asked."

His whole body softened toward her.

Then he turned to me with that patient voice he used on interns.

"Torrie, I made the call. If you're angry, be angry at me."

"But rules are rules. Breanne sent the wrong sheet, but your team let it go up. That's on you."

He put both hands on my shoulders.

"I saw you bought a plane ticket."

"So?"

"I can't go with you right now. Take a few days. Go home and calm down."

I shoved his hands off me.

"I never asked you to come. I'm going home to..."

"To find a husband?" He laughed. "Give it up, babe."

"Breanne grew up in that hollow too. She says there's no thirty rule. Nobody's ever heard of it."

Breanne stepped up next to him.

"Don't be mad at me, Torrie. I just couldn't stand watching you play him."

I looked at her properly then.

The cream suit was Italian.

The earrings were the little gold knots from the blue box store.

None of it matched what we paid her.

None of it matched the girl who cried in my car when I bought her first interview suit.

She'd told me she'd pay me back one day.

I opened my bag and took out the printouts.

"Okay," I said, loud enough for the back row. "Let's talk about who's playing who."

Bentley's face changed.

"Torrie. Not here."

"Here's fine."

I held up the first page.

"Three months ago. A hotel on the Gold Coast. Eight hundred and thirty dollars."

"That was the night my granny was in the hospital in Lexington."

Somebody near the windows sucked in a breath.

I turned the page.

"Two months ago. One handbag. Fourteen hundred and sixty dollars."

I looked at the bag on Breanne's arm. So did everybody else.

"Last week. One ring. Eighteen thousand dollars."

I let the last page drop onto the dolly.

"All on the company card. All in the expense system. All with receipts."

"So who's being played, Bentley?"

Nobody moved.

Breanne's mouth opened and nothing came out.

Bentley went red, then white, then red again.

"Everybody back to work," he snapped.

Nobody went back to work.

"Put my desk back," I said to the facilities guys.

This time they didn't look at anyone. They just turned the dolly around.

Sheree walked over to her own desk and came back with a can of air freshener.

It was the pine kind she kept for the microwave.

"Hold still, honey," she said to Breanne. "It smells like a side piece in here."

She sprayed Breanne from her hair to her shoes.

Then she turned and gave Bentley a long blast across the chest.

The whole sales team burst out laughing.

"Fine!" Bentley shouted. "Fine. All of you!"

He grabbed Breanne by the wrist and dragged her into his office.

The blinds came down hard.

It took forty minutes to put my office back together.

Six people from sales stayed to help me pick up contracts.

The last thing I picked up was Granny's blanket.

She'd knitted it the first winter I moved to Chicago, blue and gold, too warm for any office.

I folded it over the arm of the couch where it belonged.

My cell rang.

The number was the elder's landline. He never called before supper.

"Sadler girl," he said. "You still coming Saturday?"

"I already bought my ticket."

He was quiet a second too long.

"Then you'd best know what's waiting on you."

"What?"

"Breanne's mama has been on the phone all day, calling every house in the Hollow."

"She's telling them your Chicago man dumped you."

"For stealing out of his company."

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