Chapter 9: The Board

My father's trust deed was locked in a vault in Milan, and the courier would not reach New York until Friday.

So I walked into the Kingsley Harbor boardroom on Friday morning with the deed still on its way from the courier.

Fourteen directors sat around the long table.

Russell sat at the head, with shadows under his eyes and a dry cough he kept pressing his fist against.

Camille sat three seats down on the right, in a navy suit and a string of pearls.

She had not put on the swallow pin.

She smiled when she saw me.

"Bianca, you shouldn't be here," she said, soft and gentle. "You're not on the roll."

"I am on the roll," I said. "I own thirty-eight percent of this company."

The chairman, an old man with white eyebrows, cleared his throat.

"Mrs. Kingsley, the voting roll shows that interest transferred last Tuesday."

"To whom?"

"To Ms. Dorsey."

"By whose signature?"

Camille slid a folder across the table.

"Yours, darling," she said. "You gave them to me yourself. You were worried about your family using them against Russell."

She opened the folder to the authorization page.

My signature sat at the bottom, neat and black.

A few directors nodded.

"I was at the dentist last Tuesday," I said. "Camille drove me. I was under sedation for most of the afternoon."

"Then perhaps you signed it that morning and forgot," Camille said.

"Perhaps."

Tommaso set a document on the table in front of the chairman.

Keep reading free with an account. Start On Halloween My Husband Bet I'd Never Leave Him So I Stopped Waiting from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.