You Fired a Tech Genius novel · Chapter 12 of 32

Chapter 12: The Line

Nine hundred people turned around at once.

It sounded like a field of wheat in a wind.

At the back doors, Zoe stood where she had stood a minute ago, with the line of owners frozen in the aisle around her.

Her face hadn't moved.

That was the first thing I understood, standing on the bottom step with the marker still in my hand.

A woman who has just heard a stranger name her dead father's stores in front of a thousand people should flinch.

Zoe didn't.

She looked at the screen, at the line of white type.

"Ms. Kostas," Braxton called, with his old gloss coming back. "Would you like to tell the room who you've hired?"

Zoe began to walk.

She came down the center aisle in her camel coat with her hands in her pockets.

The grocers stepped back to give her room, and she did not hurry.

I had never seen her walk like that.

She walked like someone who had practiced it in a mirror for seven years.

The grocer in the green apron held the microphone out to her.

"Thank you, sir," she said, and her voice carried to the back wall without any help.

She stopped at the foot of the stage, next to me, close enough that her sleeve brushed mine.

She didn't look at me.

"Mr. Hallett is right about one thing," she said.

The hall went quiet.

"KOS-04 is the account code for Kostas Fresh Markets," Zoe said. "Four grocery stores on the South Side of Chicago. They belonged to my father."

A murmur, low and pitying.

"On November sixth, 2019, a hold was placed on our settlements," Zoe said.

"Our sales were collected, and our money was not paid out."

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