Chapter 21: Redline

Byron's POV

By midnight she had not called, and I had stopped pretending to read.

I had written the contract myself, without a lawyer, in nine pages.

It offered her half of Costello Properties' vote, the title of co-chief executive, and an office beside mine with the door between us never shut.

I had never given anyone half of anything.

I walked the kitchen island twice and stood at the window.

The porch lamp was on, and the gravel was empty.

At one I made coffee and did not drink it.

At three I called her phone and hung up before it rang.

I had spent three years sure of what she would choose.

Then she had stood at the fence with a man on the other side of it, and I had watched her walk back without a word.

I had not known what she would say to me.

That was all I had.

At five a car turned into the drive.

I was at the door before the engine cut.

She came up the steps in the gray suit with her hair tied back and a red pen in her hand.

The contract was in the other.

She had marked it from the first page to the last.

I could see the red ink through the paper.

"You didn't sleep," she said.

"No."

"Neither did I."

She walked past me into the kitchen and laid the pages on the island.

"Sit," she said.

I sat.

"Page one," she said, tapping it. "You wrote that I'm co-chief executive with half the vote."

"Yes."

"Delete half."

My whole body went cold.

"Natasha."

"Make it equal," she said. "Half sounds like a share I'm given. I want an equal vote, and I want it written as equal."

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