I Married a Stranger to Ruin Them novel · Chapter 4 of 32

Chapter 4: The Parking Lot

I walked out into the yard with sour cream still on my thumb.

The gravel crunched under my drugstore sneakers.

Ian looked me up and down and laughed.

"Wow," he said. "Okay. Wow."

"Hi, Ian."

"Sweetheart." He held up the papers. "What is this?"

"You can read."

"I read it in my office. In front of my assistant. A process server walked in during a call with the investors."

"Then you've had a whole day to think about it."

Behind me the shop door creaked.

Two of the crew came out to smoke and stopped on the step.

Then two more.

Ian noticed them and turned his smile on.

"Guys, hi. Sorry about this. My wife's had a really hard week."

Nobody answered him.

He stepped closer and dropped his voice, but not enough.

"Sweetheart, listen to me. You're not well. Tori says you've been off for months. The crying in the lab, the late nights, the paranoia about bottles."

"I've never cried in the lab."

"You stood up in front of the press and called our product garbage."

"I called it cheap."

"Same thing to a reporter." He shook the papers at me. "Withdraw this. Come home. We'll say you were exhausted, we'll get you some rest, and in a few months the board might reconsider the review of your shares."

"Might."

"If you're good."

The smokers on the step had stopped smoking.

The oldest of the crew had come to the door too, wiping his hands on a rag.

"And if I'm not good?" I said.

Ian's face did the thing it did in board meetings, right before he fired someone.

"Then you're an unemployed chemist with a frozen account, sweetheart. I canceled the company card this morning. How are you paying for that hotel?"

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