After My Fiancé Humiliated Me, I Ruined Him novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: Choose

"I'll be there Monday," I said.

I hung up.

Julien was still standing on the pavement, looking at me.

"Go," he said, before I could say anything. "It's your house. Go and keep it."

"I don't know how long."

"Then I'll cook for nobody until you know."

I flew home on Sunday.

He drove me to Le Bourget in the shop's old van, which smelled of cardboard and jasmine.

He didn't kiss me goodbye at the steps of the jet.

He kissed me in the van, for a long time, with the engine running.

"Don't sell anything," he said against my mouth.

"I never sell anything."

On Monday at nine I walked into the boardroom on the forty-first floor of Crestline.

All eleven of them were there, in person this time.

Nine men and two women.

My COO at the far end, in her reading glasses.

The chair sat at my father's end of the table.

I walked down the room and stood behind him until he got up.

Then I sat in my father's chair.

"You wanted me here," I said. "I'm here. Let's be quick."

The chair sat down two places along. His face was blotchy.

"Diana, the last three months have been a circus. A love triangle on the front page. A broker in handcuffs. You lending fourteen million euros to a perfume shop."

"Eleven point six. From my own account. You can check."

"The point is your judgment."

"Then let's talk about my judgment."

I opened my laptop and put the first slide on the wall.

"Our luxury division lost money four years out of the last five," I said. "It's run from New York by people who buy names and close the shops behind them. That is exactly the deal a broker brought us in January. A hundred and twenty years of a house, for an airport counter in Denver."

Nobody said anything.

"I spent three months inside that house. I watched an eighty-four-year-old woman sell six bottles to a woman who came in for one. I watched a launch with no name and no advertising sell out in nine hours." I clicked. "That's the business I want us in. Not buying the old houses. Partnering with them. Leaving them standing."

"And who runs it?" the chair said.

"I do. From Paris, half the year. I'm moving the luxury division there. The office on the avenue Montaigne has two empty floors." I looked down the table. "I'm keeping Crestline. Every ship, every hotel, every one of the eleven thousand. I'll be in this chair every month and on every call. If that's not enough for you, vote me out now."

The chair looked around the table.

Nobody looked back at him.

My COO took off her reading glasses.

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