Chapter 21: Twenty Weeks

Elena's POV

Forty members of the Kovalev Group board met on Thursday in the family lounge of a neonatal unit.

There were not forty chairs, so six directors sat on the windowsill and two on a toy chest.

A volunteer in a pink smock handed out hand sanitizer at the door.

She would not hear a word about anyone's schedule.

I sat at the head of the room in a wheelchair, in a blazer over my hospital gown, with Luca's photograph in my pocket.

Maxim stood.

He wore his dark suit and no tie, and he had slept four hours in three days.

"I'll be short," he said. "I'm leaving the chief executive's chair, effective today, and I'm nominating Elena Bruni to take it."

Nobody said anything for a moment.

The board chair cleared his throat.

"Maxim, you founded this company at twenty-six."

"I did."

"She resigned in front of the whole floor. She took leave. She has had, forgive me, a baby."

"She's run this company for six years," Maxim said. "I signed things. She ran it."

He looked around the room.

"Every time one of you thought I'd made a good decision, she had made it first and put it on my desk."

A man near the window made a small unhappy noise.

I recognized him as the one who had called me a thief in October.

"I think the gentleman by the window has a concern," I said.

"I have no concern," the man said, going red.

"Then say so, and say it on the record."

"I have no concern."

"Wonderful. I'll make a note."

A director on the toy chest laughed into her fist.

"And you?" the chair said to Maxim. "What will you be?"

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