Regret is the Punishment novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: Margo

Margo read the text a third time.

Then she looked up at her husband, and the whole room waited.

"Cyril," she said. "Your badge."

"Margo, we are not doing this in front of everyone."

"Your badge. Your keys. Your laptop stays on the desk."

"You can't be serious."

"I own sixty percent of this company, and my father built it. I am extremely serious."

She turned to the shipping manager.

"Walk him out, please. Gently. He's had a shock."

For a second, I thought Cyril would argue.

He looked around the room for one friendly face and found forty people studying their shoes.

He unclipped the badge from his belt and dropped it on the table.

It skidded across the wood and stopped against my hand.

"This is your fault," he said to me, very low, as he passed.

I didn't move.

The shipping manager took his elbow, and they went out through the glass doors together.

Margo watched them go.

Then she handed me my phone.

"My office," she said. "Now."

Her office had a view of the marina and nothing on the desk except a photograph of her father on a boat.

She did not offer me a seat.

I stood in front of the desk.

"I'd like to be clear about something," she said. "I am not your friend."

"I know."

"I don't forgive you. You slept with my husband for five months while you wore my company's name on your lanyard."

"I know."

"And I'm not going to pretend that what you did on Harbor Lane is something I can look at."

Keep reading free with an account. Start Regret is the Punishment from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.