Chapter 16: The Email

Everybody at the door table had stopped eating.

Bess had a spoon halfway to her mouth.

Gran had the ladle in the air.

Seth just looked at me, and waited, the way he always did.

"I wrote it," I said into the phone.

"You."

"On the Fourth of July, at about four in the afternoon. I signed it with my whole name."

"I sent it to my brother and nobody else."

There was a pause on the line.

"Your brother deleted it within one minute of receiving it," the lawyer said.

"I know. I watched him do it."

"You watched him."

"He was standing in this shed. He held up his phone to show me the empty inbox."

The lawyer was quiet for a long time.

"Miss Wakefield, why didn't you send it to the board? Or to my client? He'd have taken your call."

In my last life I'd have sent it to everyone.

I'd have copied the board and the buyer and the naval architect, and I'd have fixed the numbers myself by morning.

And Arabella would have taken a bow.

"It wasn't my job anymore," I said. "I told the person whose job it was."

"I see."

"But I'd like to say one more thing, if that's all right."

"Please."

"The people in the build sheds didn't write those numbers. They built her exactly to the sheet they were given."

"Look at the first page of that weight sheet. The line for operations approval."

More paper moved.

Then he made a small noise.

"It's signed," he said. "In blue ink."

"Then you know whose job it was."

He asked if I'd forward my copy of the email from my own sent folder.

I went up to the loft, took the phone out of the drawer and turned it on.

Keep reading free with an account. Start This Heiress Doesn't Fight Anymore from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.