A Ruler in Disguise novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: Mrs. Harlow

I remembered the day as soon as I saw the blue ink.

I was twenty years old, in my only good blouse, in a glass office on the ninth floor of the Harlow Foundation.

A woman in a gray suit had slid a stack of papers across the desk.

"Congratulations, Miss Broadnax," she said.

"Full tuition for the horticulture program, books, housing."

There were fourteen pages.

She flipped to each signature line and pointed with a pen.

"Acceptance. Tax form. Medical release. Sign here, here, and here."

A notary in the corner had stamped every page without looking up.

I had cried in the elevator on the way down.

I had never read a single word of those pages.

"Clo," Dina said gently. "Breathe."

I realized I was gripping the counter.

"That's why she said it," I said. "That I took their money once."

"There's more," Dina said, and scrolled down.

"It's a corporate filing.

"The Harlow family trust holds forty percent of the company, and a third of that was left to Devin."

She looked at Dev and swallowed.

"Belonged. When he went missing, his shares couldn't be sold, but his spouse could vote them."

"Spouse," Dev said.

"Every year for six years, a proxy has been filed under the name Mrs. Clover Harlow," Dina read.

"It votes those shares for Weston Harlow as vice chair and then chair."

The shop was silent.

The refrigerator hummed in the back room.

"I have never voted anything," I said. "I don't know what a proxy is. I've never even been in that building since that day."

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