Chapter 17: Signed Over

Della's POV

At nine o'clock the boardroom was full of people who had known my husband for years and had never once asked me a question.

Now they all looked at me.

I walked in with my side taped under a borrowed blouse and my mother's notebook in my arm, and the stitches pulled at every step.

Dalton stayed in the hall, on the other side of the glass wall.

I had asked him to.

This was a room I had to walk into alone.

The six board members sat along the table.

The woman in the grey blazer had flown in overnight, and she sat at the foot with a legal pad.

Gilbert stood at the head, in a clean suit, with a pen in his hand and a stack of papers in front of him.

His eyes were red, and he had shaved badly.

"Thank you for coming, Della," the chairman said gently. "Gilbert has asked to make a statement."

"I'll make it standing," Gilbert said.

He didn't look at me.

He looked at the table, then lifted his head and spoke to the six faces.

"The patent for Bloom was filed eleven months after Della Brennan joined this company," he said.

"She didn't invent it here. She brought it. Her mother's notebook is the source, and I knew that when I hired her."

Nobody moved.

"I married her to keep it," he said. "I told you the formula was developed in-house. That was a lie."

He swallowed.

"I told her she'd never have to worry about money, and she never knew she was the money."

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