The Woman He Traded Is Now His Equal novel · Chapter 23 of 24
Chapter 23: Brennan Costello
I walked into the Aspinwall boardroom on Wednesday and did not sit at the head of the table.
Seven directors watched me choose a chair in the middle.
"I have an answer," I said. "I'll take it with four conditions."
The oldest director folded his hands.
"Go ahead."
"Every one of the two hundred employees keeps a job, and I interview anyone who wants to be moved. Rhys Balfour runs finance, with a title that says so."
Rhys, at the far end, put his hand over his mouth.
"Second, the company is renamed. Aspinwall comes off the building."
Nobody argued.
"Third, the partnership on the West Side is written under my name and Byron Costello's. Mine goes first."
"And the fourth?" the director asked.
"Mr. Aspinwall keeps his pension, and his mother's house stays hers. I don't need anyone's mother out on the street."
The room was silent.
"Done," the director said.
At noon the next day I stood in the lobby of Aspinwall Tower in front of two hundred employees and a bank of cameras.
The long brass letters across the lobby wall said ASPINWALL CAPITAL.
Under them, on a stepladder, a man in a work shirt held a drill.
Dee stood near the front in her scrubs and Mets jacket, because she had come off a shift and refused to change.
The widow sat in a folding chair beside her with her cane across her knees.
Rhys had his glasses pushed up on his forehead, and his lips were pressed together hard.
Byron stood at the edge of the crowd with his arms crossed and did not come forward.
He had told me this was mine.
I stepped to the microphone.
"Good morning. I'm Natasha Brennan."
A few people laughed, because they knew.
"As of today, the firm that was Aspinwall Capital is Brennan Costello," I said. "You're not being absorbed. You're not being cut. You're being kept."
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