He Waited for Fifteen Years novel · Chapter 4 of 48
Chapter 4: The Family Table
The boardroom on the forty-first floor of Ferraro Tower had a table long enough to land a plane on.
Twelve chairs. Eleven of them were already full when I walked in on Monday at five to nine.
Mine was at the far end, by the window.
Nobody had put out water for it.
Bryant's father sat at my father's right hand, the way he had for thirty years. Gray hair, gold cufflinks, a voice like a dentist.
Bryant sat beside him with a leather folder squared in front of him.
He didn't look up.
The cousins filled the rest of the table. Men who came to two meetings a year and voted the way the coffee tasted.
"Christina," Bryant's father said. "Thank you for joining us. How's the face?"
"Healing."
"Good. Good. Let's begin."
He folded his hands.
"Saturday night our newest board member made a public scene at a charity event, got herself photographed bleeding, and announced an engagement to a man none of us have vetted. The stock opened down two percent this morning."
"Bryant threw a box at my head," I said.
"There are different accounts of what happened."
"There's a video. Eleven million people have seen it."
One of the cousins coughed into his fist.
My father said nothing. He was watching me with his chin on his knuckles.
"Nobody is questioning Christina's heart," Bryant's father went on. "Only her judgment. She's twenty. She's a student. Perhaps her trust votes should be held by her father until she's finished school."
"My trust votes are mine. They became mine on Saturday."
"And on Saturday you used them to embarrass this family."
Bryant opened his folder.
"Can we get to the actual business? Some of us work here."
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