Everyone Used Me for Free, So the Billionaire Taught Me to Send the Bill novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: First Invoice

The Home's board met on Thursday in the library, around a table the length of a school bus.

Eight people sat at it, with Mrs. Lund at the head in her lilac blazer.

Mason stood against the back wall by the door, with his hands in his pockets.

He had not taken the chair at the head of the table, which was his, and nobody had asked him to.

Mrs. Lund read her motion aloud in a voice full of regret.

"It grieves me to say this about a man who has done so much for the children," she said. "But Mr. Greer has formed an intimate relationship with a young woman in our care, and she has no one to protect her."

"I'm twenty-six," I said.

"Sweetheart, you've been lied to for twenty years. You can hardly judge who is being honest with you now."

A man at the far end, a banker, cleared his throat.

"Ms. Pennock. You asked for time. Three minutes."

I stood up.

I had slept for two hours, and my knees felt thin, but I did not look at the back wall.

If I looked at Mason, I would ask him to speak, and that was the one thing I had forbidden.

"I'm not here to sue the Home," I said. "Nobody here is closing anything. There is a reserve in the Home's name that pays every salary and every meal for eighteen months. It is already funded."

The banker's eyebrows went up.

"Whose money?"

"A loan. Mine to release or to cancel."

"You're borrowing for the Home?"

"I'm lending to it. Eight percent."

A woman near the middle made a sound that might have been a laugh.

"Here is what I want," I said. "An outside accountant reads every line of the trust. The board hires him, and if the board won't, I'll pay him out of my kitchen wages. And when the numbers are in, Mrs. Lund stops being the trustee."

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