Unforgiven: The Billionaire's Amnesiac Ex-Wife novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: The Chairman's Pin

Stefan's POV

The shareholders' breakfast was at eight, in the private dining room on the top floor of the flagship hotel.

I had given that room away to nine hundred weddings, and I walked into it knowing I would not be back.

Thirty-one people sat at the long table with eggs going cold in front of them.

My mother sat at the far end, in navy, with her cream gloves folded beside her plate.

She smiled at me, and I knew she believed I had come to sit down quietly.

She had told them to expect a motion on Monday.

She had not expected me to speak before it.

"Before the agenda," I said, and stayed on my feet, "I have a statement."

The lead director, a gray man who had known my father forty years, put down his fork.

"Stefan, perhaps after the minutes..."

"No. It's about the company, and it's about me, and it won't keep."

My mouth was dry.

I thought of Lydia on the sidewalk in the rain with her hand on the door.

Explain it to the people you owe.

"Eleven years ago, on Route 9, a woman named Anne Garrick was hit by a car and left in the road," I said. "The car was my mother's silver Mercedes. My mother was driving."

The room made no sound at all.

"I was in the passenger seat. I was twenty-three. I told her to stop three times, and she didn't, and I didn't make her."

Down the table, someone's cup touched its saucer.

"A week later my father had the taillight repaired for cash. I signed the bill. My father died six months ago without reporting it, and neither did I."

"Stefan," my mother said, very softly.

"Four years ago I found the dead woman's daughter at a hotel event. A year later I married her. I did not tell her any of this. She is Lydia Garrick. She is the woman this family told the city was a thief."

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