My Childhood Friend Fired Me for His Girlfriend. I Took My Millions With Me! novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: The Landing

Jessamine's POV

The speaker was warm from the last person's hand.

Below me, eighty faces tipped up to the landing, and I knew the name of every one.

"The memo is false," I said. "Nobody is closing Columbus, and nobody is being cut."

A sound went through the rows, half a breath and half a groan.

"It came from Keaton's lawyer on his last night with a password," I said. "Keaton fired him yesterday, in front of a day room full of people drinking coffee."

Someone near the back laughed, and then stopped.

"I'm going to tell you three things, and then I'm going to take a vote."

Keaton stood two steps behind me with his hands at his sides.

He had not tried to take the speaker.

"One. I'm not selling this company to Stroud Capital, at forty-one million or at forty-eight."

The woman in the front row with the memo in her fist went white.

"Two," I said. "Every one of you gets the year-end bonus that was promised, in full, by the end of the month."

I stopped and let that settle.

"Mr. Stroud is buying new shares in the company, personally, with his own money," I said. "The money goes in, and it pays you."

Emmett had come up the stairs without my seeing. He stood at the foot of the landing with his hands in his pockets.

"Is that right?" I asked him.

"That's right," Emmett said. "Nine million six hundred thousand. In writing."

A sound went up from the atrium that I had never heard in that building.

It was people breathing out.

I waited until it was quiet.

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