Divorce While I'm Pregnant? Fine, Let's Sign It! novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: February

I couldn't sleep.

The radiator banged, the baby rolled, and at a quarter to one I heard a drawer open in the kitchen below.

I put my coat on over my nightgown and went down the back stairs in my socks.

The kitchen light was on.

Otis stood at the steel worktable with a gray folder open in front of him, and his face was tired and pale.

"You said not tonight," I said.

"It's after midnight." He didn't look up. "That makes it tomorrow."

I came over and stood beside him.

The folder was old and soft at the corners.

Inside were photocopies, a few typed pages with a gold company seal in the corner, and a photograph of five men in suits standing in front of a half-built glass tower.

"Do you know any of these men?" Otis asked.

I put my finger on the second from the left.

He had thick white eyebrows and a crooked smile and my own chin.

"That's my grandfather."

"And the tall one next to him?"

"I don't know."

"That's Holden's father. And the younger one at the end, with the terrible haircut, is me."

I stared at the picture.

He did have a terrible haircut.

"The year after that photograph, your grandfather and Holden's father started Stroud Capital," Otis said. "I joined when Holden did, as a founding partner, the year after he graduated."

"Otis, what is this?"

"Holden's father owned forty-eight percent of the company when he died. Holden inherited that." He turned a page and tapped a line of type. "Your grandfather owned fifty-two."

I read the line twice.

It said, in plain black type: A. HENSLEY, 52%.

"That's the controlling share," Otis said. "The voting stock. Everything else in the company is smaller than that one block."

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