He Chose His Ex, So I Chose My Empire novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: Gold Shovels

By eight the next morning, the photo had been shared forty thousand times.

By nine, the city had emailed.

The housing director wrote it herself, which was how I knew it hurt her.

"Laurel. Legal has put our partnership under review until this blows over. I'm sorry. My hands are tied for a week. Fight."

By nine-thirty, two of the donors who'd pledged to First Key after the Fairmont had "paused" their gifts.

Jo read their emails out loud in a funny voice.

Then she stopped doing the voice and just read them.

The analyst was refreshing the comments under Sabrina's interview, which was a mistake.

"Don't," I said.

"They're calling you the Dawn Divorcée."

"I've been called worse in a Honda."

The grant writer turned his laptop toward me.

"Harbor Light just posted," he said. "She moved it."

"Moved what?"

"The groundbreaking. It was next month. It's today. Eleven o'clock. The lot on Folsom."

I looked at the clock on my phone.

10:12.

I understood it all at once.

The presidency took effect at the groundbreaking.

If Sabrina put a gold shovel in that dirt today, with the photo still everywhere and the city frozen, she walked away with the title before anybody could stop her.

I stood up and put on my blazer.

"Jo. Drive."

"Where are we going?"

"To a party I'm not invited to."

"My favorite kind," Jo said, and grabbed her keys.

...

The lot on Folsom Street was a block of mud behind a chain-link fence.

Somebody had laid a long strip of green carpet across the mud, and on the carpet was a row of white chairs, a lectern, and eight gold shovels standing in a fresh square of soft dirt with a ribbon tied around them.

There was a backdrop with a drawing of the glass tower on it.

There were cameras. A lot of them.

The whole society site had come, and two of the TV stations.

The board sat in the white chairs in their good coats.

Sabrina stood at the lectern in cream wool and pearls, with the wind off the bay lifting her blowout.

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