Chapter 12: The Duck

"No," Clara said.

"It's mine."

She tucked the duck against her chest.

"He carved it for the girl in the stairwell, and I'm the girl in the stairwell."

I looked at the nick in the wing.

The hall light was dim, and my hand was already out.

"A knife slipped there," I said.

"He was cursing in a whisper, and the nanny was coming up the stairs."

Clara's face went still.

"Where did you hear that?"

"I was there."

It came out of me before I'd thought it through.

I had a nine-year-old's memory of a cold nick under my thumb, and a boy saying a word he shouldn't.

Clara stared at me.

For the first time, she looked like she was calculating a bill.

"You're guessing," she said.

"My mother told dinner stories, Clara.

"You sat at that table."

"Tomorrow," Clara said, very low.

"The Founders' dinner.

"I'll hand it to him in front of every investor he has, and he'll say my name."

I stepped back.

My robe was damp from the bath, and my pulse was hammering, and everything in me wanted to snatch the thing.

Instead I heard my own voice go level, the way it did in a bad room.

"Good," I said.

"Do it in front of everyone."

Clara's eyes narrowed.

"You want me to?"

"I want you to say it out loud, where it can't be unsaid."

She searched my face for a trick.

I let her find nothing, and she took the duck and the stairwell door and was gone.

The Lakeview's dining room was built for a hundred guests.

Sixty of them sat at one long table under a chandelier the size of a car.

Ingrid presided at the head, and Lucas sat at her right in a black suit.

I sat on his left with my hands in my lap.

I hadn't told him.

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Billionaire Boss Won't Let Me Quit from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.