I built a lookout room so I could watch my husband come home. On opening night, I found him screwing with another woman in it. novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: The Clock

Jesse's POV

Dani walked into the clubhouse she had built with her head up.

I walked half a step behind her, with my hands wrapped in gauze, and the whole room turned to look.

Every brother was at the long table in his cut.

Marla stood at the kitchen pass with a dish towel over her shoulder.

Boone sat at the far end with his hands flat on the wood.

Hoyt stood at the head with the ham in front of him and the carving knife in his fist, still smiling.

"Danielle," he said. "Sit. Eat."

"I'll stand."

"Suit yourself. You've got the floor." He gestured with the knife. "Let's hear this great thing you've got."

She put the gray folder on the table and opened it.

"I'm going to read two papers," she said. "Then I'm going to ask you something."

Her voice carried to the back of the room, and I heard the men shift.

She read the deed first.

She read the county seal, the date, the parcel number and the words, "Raymond Rawlins, entire parcel."

She read the lease next: one dollar a year, twenty years, signed Hoyt Dagget in blue ink.

"It expired in June," she said. "The club has been standing on my land for four months without a lease."

A low noise went around the table.

"That's a forgery," Hoyt said.

"Is it your signature?"

"It's a copy of a copy. Her father drank, boys. He signed anything."

Dani did not look at him.

She looked down the table at the men.

"Raise your hand if you've paid a hundred and fifty dollars a month into the building fund."

For a moment nobody did.

Then one of my father's old crew put up his hand, and the man beside him did, and then it spread, hand after hand, all the way down.

Almost every hand went up.

"For fourteen months," Dani said. "That's sixty-one thousand dollars. Hoyt told me the fund was empty. I put thirty-eight thousand of my own money into your floors."

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