My Husband Chose My Best Friend Over Me, So I Took Everything Back novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Vote

Meredith discloses everything to the partners before Bree can send the video. Bree sends it anyway and nobody opens it. Anthony Crane walks in as Clark's counsel.

I walked into the partners' conference room at eight fifty-six.

Fourteen partners sat around the long table. Howard Finch was at the head with his glasses on their cord.

Bree sat at his right hand with a laptop open and a tray of pastries she had brought for everyone.

She looked up and smiled.

It was the same smile she had given me across a hundred lunches.

"Meredith," Howard said. "You're early."

"I'd like the floor before the vote."

Bree's smile held. "Howard, it's irregular. We should start on time."

"Two minutes, Howard," I said. "It's a conflict disclosure. The firm's own rules say it comes first."

Howard looked at me over his glasses, then nodded once.

I did not sit.

"Last night I found my husband, Clark Kovach, and Bree Rowan, our director of client relations, in my bedroom," I said. "She was hiding in my closet. She recorded me with a phone."

Nobody moved.

Bree's laugh was soft and sad.

"Meredith, honey."

"She told me she would send that recording to every person at this table at nine o'clock unless I withdrew from this vote and signed my house over to him."

"That is not what happened," Bree said.

"I recorded her demands last night, and her text to me. Both are with my own counsel and with my grandmother." I kept my voice level. "I filed for divorce at twelve minutes past one this morning. Anything either of them sends you is evidence in that case."

I looked down the table.

"If it reaches you, do not open it. Delete it, and tell Howard. If you watch it, you are a witness in my divorce, and I will call you."

A partner at the far end shut her laptop slowly.

"Howard," Bree said. Her voice shook, and it was perfect. "Meredith is not well. She hasn't slept. Clark told me she's been under terrible strain."

"Clark told you," I said.

The room heard it.

Bree's mouth opened and closed.

"I'm her friend," she said. "I'm trying to help."

"You hid in my closet, Bree."

The clock on the wall clicked to nine.

I watched her hand.

She could have said nothing. She could have closed the laptop and apologized.

She had gone too far to stop, and I knew it, because I knew her.

Her thumb touched the screen.

Fourteen phones buzzed on the table.

Then fifteen, with Howard's.

Nobody reached for one.

Howard Finch took off his glasses and let them hang on the cord.

"Phones," he said. "All of them. In the middle of the table. Face down."

"Howard, it's nothing," Bree said. "It's a calendar update."

"Then you won't mind if nobody reads it."

He stood and walked down the table with the empty pastry tray.

One by one the partners slid their phones onto it.

The oldest partner, a man who had once refused to learn email, put his in with both hands and looked relieved.

Howard set the tray on the credenza by the door.

"The firm's general counsel will collect those and delete the message from every device, with each of you watching," he said. "Nobody opens it. Nobody forwards it. Nobody asks Meredith about it."

He turned to Bree.

"You sent it."

"It was a joke."

"At nine o'clock, to my whole partnership, after she warned me." His voice stayed flat. "That's what you call a joke."

"Howard."

"There is no vote today. The partnership meets again in thirty days, once this is settled, and you will have no hand in that calendar. You will leave this room while the partners talk."

Bree stood.

Her chair scraped.

She took her laptop and, after a second, the pastries.

At the door she looked back at me. There was no friend left in her face.

"You should've signed," she said, very quietly.

The door was glass.

Behind it, in the hall, Clark was waiting with his tie loose and his hands in his hair.

Bree walked into him and said something, and he looked past her at me.

I did not look away.

My knees had started to shake under the table, and I put a hand on the wood to stop them.

"Meredith," Howard said gently. "Sit."

I sat.

"You did the right thing, saying it out loud. It's the only thing she didn't count on."

"I should have seen it."

"You were her friend. That's different from being stupid."

His assistant put her head in. "Mr. Finch, there's a gentleman here for the Kovach matter. He says he's counsel for Mr. Kovach and needs to speak to the room."

Howard frowned. "Kovach's not a partner."

"He says he has a notice for Ms. Lang that cannot wait."

I felt it before I saw him.

A man in a dark suit and no tie came through the door.

He was tall, with gray at his temples and a nose that had been broken once and set badly.

He did not look at the partners.

He looked at me.

"Ms. Lang," said Anthony Crane. "I think we should talk."

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