Chapter 42: The Choice

Harold Rhodes was sitting in the hotel's breakfast room at seven the next morning, with a pot of tea and two empty chairs.

I stopped on the bottom stair.

Nathaniel stopped one step above me.

"I booked it under my grandmother's name," I said under my breath.

"He found it before the plane landed," Nathaniel said. "He likes us to know that he can."

The old man lifted his hand, palm up, toward the chairs.

"Sit, both of you. The Council does not start until nine, and this will not take long."

Behind him, at the next table, the bald man with the gold pin was reading a newspaper.

He did not look up.

I sat down across from Harold, and Nathaniel took the chair beside me and put his hand over mine on the cloth.

"You've moved the meeting," I said.

"I have a very large family. They prefer to hear things early." Harold poured himself tea. "I have brought a courtesy for my son."

He took a leather folder from the chair beside him and laid it on the table.

"Read it, Nathaniel. All of it. Your wife has taught you the habit."

Nathaniel opened the folder.

I leaned in against his shoulder and read with him, line for line, because that was the rule we had made on our wedding night.

The first page restored every share of voting stock he had signed into his father's trust.

The second gave him back the chief executive's chair at Rhodes Maison, with all eleven brands, and the Park Avenue tower, and the labs.

The third unfroze every account in his name.

It was everything he had lost in under two weeks.

Nathaniel's hand tightened over mine.

I did not move, and I did not look at him.

I watched the page, because I knew that whatever he did next, I wanted to see it with my eyes open.

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