My Childhood Friend Fired Me for His Girlfriend. I Took My Millions With Me! novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Offer

Emmett Stroud offers her more than her shares are worth, Keaton begs her back in front of the staff, and Jessamine asks for it in writing. A care home call says June is refusing food and Keaton is not picking up.

I took his card and didn't say anything.

The man in the charcoal coat waited and didn't fill the quiet.

"I'm not going to repeat anything in a lobby," I said.

"Fair," Emmett Stroud said. "Then I'll say one thing and leave you alone."

A woman in a navy suit had come out of the side elevator behind him with a tablet. She stopped a few feet off and pretended to read it.

"Friday's offer was for the company," he said. "I'd rather have what you built than what he put his name on."

"The software."

"The routing engine. I read the architecture notes in the data room. Whoever wrote them never wrote a lazy line."

I had not been praised by a stranger in a very long time.

"Eleven percent of forty-eight million is five point two eight," he said. "I'll pay you five point nine for it. Cash, wired when the sale closes."

"That's six hundred twenty thousand over," I said.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because a buyer who wants the thing to run needs the person who wrote it to want it too," he said. "Take the weekend."

The elevator chimed behind me.

Keaton came out of it fast, without his jacket. Half the floor was behind him, standing in the glass hall above us and looking down.

"Tess!"

I turned around.

"Don't do this in front of him," Keaton said, and pointed at Emmett without looking at him. "Come upstairs. We'll talk. I'll put you back at the same salary today."

"Today," I said.

"Right now. Sienna got ahead of herself. I'll fix it."

"You told me it was already done."

"Tess." He lowered his voice, and it carried anyway. "It's you and me. Come on."

He had said that to me on the school bus, and at my father's funeral, and the night we signed the company papers.

I looked at the glass hall, and at all the faces in it.

"Put it in writing," I said. "On company letterhead. With the eleven percent in the first line."

His mouth opened and nothing came out.

I walked through the revolving door into a cold, bright morning, with my cooler in one hand and a stranger's card in the other.

Heidi was eating cereal on our kitchen counter in her scrubs when I let myself in.

She worked nights at a children's hospital. She looked at me, then at the clock, then at the cooler.

"You're supposed to be at work until six," she said.

"I got fired."

She put the spoon down. "By who?"

"Keaton."

"Keaton," she said slowly. "Tall, grinning, calls you weirdo. That Keaton."

"He gave my job to his girlfriend. In front of everyone. Somebody filmed it."

"Okay, I'm going to kill him," Heidi said, "and I'm going to need an alibi, so tell me everything in order."

I told her. I told her about the grant, and the forty-eight million, and the man by the window.

She listened with her arms crossed.

"So you have five million dollars," she said, when I finished.

"I have eleven percent of something that's maybe worth that."

"Which a man in a nice coat will buy today, at a bonus."

"He wants the code," I said.

"Mm." Heidi chewed. "Or he wants you."

"Heidi."

"I'm a nurse. I know when somebody's hovering." She pointed her spoon at the card. "Do you trust him?"

"I met him forty minutes ago."

"So that's a no with an asterisk."

I laughed for the first time that day. It cracked in the middle.

My phone buzzed on the counter.

Keaton: I messed up. Come back. I'll pay you double. Nobody has to know.

I looked at it for a while.

Then another one came in.

Keaton: Sienna says you're being dramatic. You know she's wrong. Call me.

"Nobody has to know," Heidi read over my shoulder. "Forty people filmed it."

"Eleven," I said. "Maybe twelve."

"He's gaslighting you with a number problem."

I turned the phone face down.

I sat on the stool and ate half a bowl of her cereal. It was the first thing I had eaten since the motel.

At two in the afternoon, my phone rang again.

It was a number with a Findlay area code, and I answered before the first ring finished.

"Jessamine, it's the front desk at Maple Court," the nurse said. "I'm sorry to call, I know you were just here."

I stood up.

"June won't eat," she said. "She's been asking for you since breakfast. She keeps saying she'll tell Keaton to come."

"Did you call him?"

"His number is the emergency contact." She paused. "It's rung out four times."

I was already looking for my keys.

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