Chapter 20: Eleven Percent

On my twenty-eighth birthday I walked into the Ferrell Foods boardroom at nine in the morning.

No one stopped me at the door.

The paper had run three weeks before.

It had put Cecily's payments on the front page and Leland's name in the third paragraph.

Hugh's clip had died without ever reaching the public.

My father's trust accounts were frozen, and half the board had stopped returning his calls.

I sat down at the long table in the chair I had been told I would never fill.

Nine directors looked at me.

My father sat at the head, in his usual seat, with his hands folded.

He had not slept.

"Today the shares in her late mother's name pass to Ms. Ferrell," the company secretary read.

"Eleven percent, with full voting rights."

"Thank you," I said.

"Does anyone have business before the vote on the chair?"

The director who had asked to see the accounts at the Harbor Club lifted one finger.

"I do," he said. "I move that the board hear Imogen Ferrell on the family trust."

My father's head came up.

"This is a family matter," he said.

"It's a company matter, sir. It touches the cash reserve we audit."

"Second," said a woman halfway down the table.

I stood and put the grey box file on the polished wood.

"I'll be brief," I said.

"Two years of transfers left the trust's cash account for a holding company on the east dock."

"I can explain that."

"Please do."

He opened his mouth.

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Traded Me for My Sister Twice, But I Planned the Second Time from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.