Love After Layoffs novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: The Chairman's Verdict

The study on the fifty-first floor smelled of cedar and cold coffee.

Alvin Ketterman did not sit behind his desk this time.

He stood at the long window with his cane planted and his back to us.

Below him the river was black, and the bridges were strings of yellow beads.

"Sit," he said, without turning.

Brooks sat.

I stayed on my feet in my mother's dress, and the old man let me.

"I'll tell you what I have in this room," Alvin said.

"In one hour I put the file and the key in front of the board."

"You can stand beside me when I do, or you can go home."

"That is the truth, and it is mine to prove."

He turned around.

"The other thing I have is a scandal."

"A scandal is whatever two hundred people say on the way home from a party."

"Tonight they say my grandson hid under his mother's name for two years."

"They say he took a married woman to a hotel."

"They say he turned down the daughter of a shareholder in public."

"Half of that is a lie and half is true.

The board will vote on all of it as if it were true."

Brooks stood up.

"Then let me spare them the vote."

"Sit down."

"I'm resigning as Chief Client Officer," Brooks said. "Tonight, in writing. I'll go back to the vendor desk, or I'll leave the company."

"Brooks."

"If I go, the Scaifes have nothing to hold over this family."

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