Chapter 8: Beacon Street

Benedict put the phone on speaker and held it between us.

"Miriam," he said. "It is two in the morning."

"I'm aware." Her voice was cool and wide awake. "Camryn showed me a video. You standing on your doorstep with that girl."

"Then you saw me say I kissed her first."

"You've lost your mind."

"Possibly."

"The Ellingwood Trust holds fifteen percent of Amesbury Capital," Miriam said.

"Your father agreed to that on his deathbed. I would hate to see it become a problem."

I sat up with the sheet around me.

Benedict's jaw went tight.

"Are you threatening my firm over a twenty-one-year-old student?"

"I'm asking you to end an inappropriate arrangement by morning. Dismiss her. Send her back where she came from."

"Where is that, Miriam?"

"A dining hall, I believe."

He looked at me.

I looked back and shook my head.

I did not want to be the reason.

He reached out and put his hand over mine on the sheet.

"No," he said into the phone.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I said no. Susie stays, in every sense you mean it."

"If the Trust wants to withdraw, you can have the paperwork on my desk by nine."

"You'd throw away your father's firm."

"My father is dead," Benedict said. "He'd have thrown you out in the first week."

He ended the call.

For a long second the room was silent.

"You shouldn't have done that," I whispered.

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