I Stripped to Keep My Boyfriend in School, and He Sold Me to the Man My Brother Died Owing novel · Chapter 18 of 24
Chapter 18: The Chair
Toby's POV
On the Monday before she said yes, I walked into the family room at the Lakeshore Club at four in the afternoon, with no coat and no one beside me, and I shut the door.
A dozen men sat at the long table.
They had sat in that room since my grandfather's day.
The old ones wore cardigans and the young ones wore good suits, and every one of them looked up when the door closed.
Lars Heikkinen sat at the foot with a legal pad in front of him and a glass of water.
He smiled at me.
"Tobias," he said. "We weren't expecting you."
"I called it," I said.
"You did. Of course."
"Sit," said the oldest of them, a man of eighty who had run the Superior docks when my father was a boy.
"I'll stand," I said.
I did not go to the head of the table.
I had sat there for three winters, and now I stood at the side with my hands on the back of an empty chair.
"I'm resigning the chair," I said.
Nobody spoke.
A radiator hissed in the corner.
"The family seat," I said. "The Lakeshore Club. The Canal Park concessions. The salt and sand yard. The dock labor contracts in Superior. I've signed every one of them to the stewards' hall, and the lawyer has the papers."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of I Stripped to Keep My Boyfriend in School, and He Sold Me to the Man My Brother Died Owing are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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