Quitting this Family after Being Abandoned for Laughs novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: Declan's Hearing

Declan's POV

The board met me at ten on Thursday in my own conference room, which I was not allowed to call mine.

Three of them sat at the long table.

The regional director sat on the wall screen, in a dark office on the other side of the sea, with his tie too tight.

The chair was a woman with silver hair whom I had met once, at a funeral.

She laid four photographs on the table and turned them to face me.

"Mr. Trevellian," she said. "Please look."

I looked.

In the first, Tara and I were walking down a wet street with our shoulders touching.

In the second, she stood against a glass door with both hands in my shirt.

The third and the fourth I did not need to study, because I had been there.

"The complaint says you pursued a subordinate you had personally recruited, that you shielded her from review, and that you sit on a conflict of interest with a client," the chair said. "Do you dispute any of it?"

"No."

She raised her eyebrows.

"I recruited her, and I shielded her from a review that was not honest," I said. "I'm also in a relationship with her, and I should have reported it the day it began."

"You admit it."

"Yes."

On the screen the regional director put his fingers together.

"Then there's little for the board to discuss," he said.

"There's one thing," I said. "I would like you to read the letter that started it."

"Mr. Trevellian, you are suspended. You have no standing to introduce evidence."

"Then I'll sit here and say nothing more."

I folded my hands.

I had decided on Tuesday night, with the lamp off in my dark kitchen, that I would not drag Tara into a room full of people who wanted to be shown her photographs.

I would take the fall, keep my mouth shut, and let her stay on the Myria team.

It was the cleanest plan I had ever made.

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