The Billionaire Heir Called Me a Freeloader, I'd Bankrolled His Family for 600 Years novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Not Signing
At the company dinner the fiancée tries to cut Eleanor's share to a tenth of one percent while the heir watches, so Eleanor refuses and walks out to find her account was frozen before dinner began.
At the annual company dinner, three hundred people watched Camille slide a contract across the table to me.
I had been sitting at the head table for an hour with a glass of wine I hadn't touched.
Camille had brought it to me herself.
"You must be tired, Ms. Clifford," she had said, and she had moved my chair closer to the heater.
She was the nicest person on that floor, and I had noticed.
Now she set her own glass down and smiled at the room.
"Ms. Clifford, Geoffrey doesn't want to challenge you directly, so I will."
The conversation near us stopped.
"You take sixty percent of this company's profit every year. Do you think you've earned it?"
She waited. Nobody helped me.
"We have three thousand employees, and not one of them can name a thing you've done."
Geoffrey sat beside her and turned his wineglass by the stem.
He didn't tell her to stop.
I was six hundred and twelve years old.
I had been drinking tea on this company's roof for most of its modern life, and nobody had ever asked me to explain myself.
That morning a cup of tea had been waiting outside the garden door, as one did every morning.
I had never found out whose habit that was.
I looked at Geoffrey.
He looked back at me and did not blink.
"Eleanor," he said, and he had never used my first name before. "Old ties don't justify payments like these. If you want a say, show us what you bring."
I set my glass down.
Six hundred years earlier, an orphan named Edmund had knelt in a ruined chapel in the snow with chilblains on his face.
I had given him a bowl of porridge, a cart and a handful of silver.
He had cried into the bowl and sworn I would get most of every coin he ever earned.
That promise became a trading house, then a bank, then this tower.
The land under the tower was mine.
I had bought it a hundred and twenty years ago and signed the deed with my own hand.
"So the Willoughbys have decided to break the agreement," I said.
Camille laughed and brushed her curls off her shoulder.
"Don't call a restructuring a breach. We're writing off costs that bring no value."
She put a folder in front of me.
Little yellow flags marked every place for a signature.
"I went through the early records. It isn't clear where your special shares came from or what they were for."
She tapped the first flag.
"You hold no position here. You don't attend a single meeting. Nobody owes you a lifetime of support."
Two executives at the next table leaned together and whispered.
I turned the pages.
The first one cut my share of the profit from sixty percent to a tenth of one percent.
The second made me hand over every control right I held in the Group, with no payment and no conditions.
"Geoffrey," I said. "Did you approve this?"
He took his time.
"Camille was blunt," he said. "But I agree with her. We're expanding overseas, and every dollar should go to people who make something."
He put his glass down.
"I built this company back up in a year. My team worked nights. You drink tea in a garden."
"Your father was willing to keep the old arrangement," I said.
"My father is not running this company."
I looked at his face, so sure of itself.
It was a young face, and I had watched its ancestors for six hundred years.
"A tenth of one percent is still several million dollars a year," Camille said. "You'll never need a job. Sign, and we're done."
I picked up the pen and spun it once in my fingers.
I tossed it back on the table.
"What if I don't sign?"
Her smile went away.
"Then the terms get worse. One email from Geoffrey and finance freezes everything you have in our system by tomorrow."
Her voice rose. People two tables over turned around.
"Then send the email," I said.
So I stood up.
"I'm not signing."
Geoffrey said nothing. Camille's mouth had gone tight.
I looked at him one more time.
"You think the thirtyfold was all your doing. Fine. Let's see how long you keep this company running without me."
I walked toward the doors.
Behind me Camille laughed, loud enough for the whole hall.
"When the Willoughbys stop paying you, Ms. Clifford, I hope you're still this calm."
In the elevator my phone buzzed.
It was my bank's alert for the company dividend account.
The account was frozen.
The freeze had been entered at 5:58 p.m.
The dinner had started at seven.
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend