He Hid Me Twelve Years and Paraded Her, So I Quit Both novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: The Successor

The ballroom made a sound I had never heard three hundred people make.

It was not a gasp.

It was a long, low breath going out of everyone at once.

Everett stood on the stage with his hands at his sides.

"My son has run this company for two years," Walter said from the head table, "and he has run it the way he ran his private life. By deciding what other people were allowed to know."

"Dad."

"I have sat on this for twelve years, and I will not sit on it tonight."

Walter turned to the elderly woman beside him.

"You have been on our board longer than my son has been alive," he said. "You are my successor as chair."

She inclined her head.

"I accept, and I will say now that the board's vote will not be a long one," she said. "Directors, hands please."

Every hand at the board's tables went up, one by one.

Everett watched them rise.

His father did not look away.

"You are no longer chief executive of Stroud Group," Walter said, quietly now. "Your badge, please."

For a moment Everett did not move.

Then he unclipped the badge from his lapel and walked to the head table with the whole ballroom watching.

He put the badge on the white tablecloth, and then his office keys, and then the platinum watch.

It was the same small pile I had left on his desk, in front of two assistants, on a hot afternoon in August.

He did not look at it.

He looked at me.

"I did love you," he said, low enough that only the front tables could hear.

"I believe that," I said. "It was never the problem. Go home, Everett."

He went out through the side door, alone, and no one stopped him.

Walter let the room settle.

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