Chapter 18: The Board

The boardroom was a glass box on the thirty-third floor, and the whole harbor lay behind it.

Eight directors sat at the long table, and none of them had expected me.

The chairman, the heavy white-haired man from table one, rose halfway out of his chair.

"Mrs. Reed," he said. "We weren't told you'd be joining us."

"I wasn't told the meeting had moved," I said. "I came anyway."

I took the empty chair at the foot of the table and set my bag on the floor.

Camille did not look surprised.

She slid a sheet of paper across to the chairman and folded her hands again.

Then the door opened, and Landon walked in.

He had fixed his tie in the elevator.

His face was still blotched along the jaw, and he kept his eyes off me.

He went to the head of the table and sat.

"Let's begin," he said. "Before the items on the agenda, I'll note for the minutes that my wife has arrived late and is not entirely herself."

"Landon," said the chairman, "she looks well to me."

"She will tell you she's well. That's part of the difficulty."

A director at the end of the table shifted in his seat.

I folded my hands and said nothing.

"Item one," said Landon. "The voting rights on the Reed Family Voting Trust."

He nodded at Camille.

"For six years, my wife, as the child's mother, has signed a ninety-day proxy.

"It lets the chief executive vote the trust's shares. I have the current one here."

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Called Our Son a Curse, Now I Own His Company from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.