The CEO's Unwanted Wife novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: Table Nine

We came in through the front doors, and the doorman forgot to open them.

I pushed them myself.

Dinner had not been served.

Four hundred people stood in knots under the chandeliers, holding drinks they had stopped tasting.

Stanford was at the center of the largest knot, one hand on a donor's shoulder, saying "family matter, a misunderstanding, a sad young woman."

He saw me in the doorway in my wet green gown with his mother on my arm.

He stopped talking.

Agnes tapped her cane on the marble, once.

The room went quiet in a ripple, table by table, from the doors to the stage.

"Stanford," she said. "I'll take the microphone."

"Mother, you're overtired."

"I'm seventy-two years old, and I'll take it."

He did not give it to her.

The woman from the foundation board, the one who had enjoyed me at the grant meeting, walked to the lectern, unclipped the microphone and put it in Agnes's hand without a word.

Agnes lifted the little player.

"This is a tape," she said, in the dry voice that had made rooms sit up for fifty years. "It was recorded in a lawyer's office five years ago. I would like you all to listen."

She held it to the microphone and pressed the button.

The hiss filled the ballroom.

Then Dalton's young voice said, "I want to go to the police," and four hundred people stopped moving.

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