Fated to My Cruel CEO novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: After Hours

Ansel drove me back to the plant without saying a word.

My car was still in the lot, alone under one yellow light.

He parked beside it and didn't unlock the doors.

"You sat next to me," he said.

"I did."

"In front of your father. In front of your brother."

"He wanted me in the chair on his right. I wasn't going to sit there."

He looked at the windshield.

"Why not?"

"Because of what he said in the kitchen."

His head turned.

"What did he say?"

I almost told him.

The word was right there in my mouth.

The whole truth was behind it, and I knew I couldn't push it out in a parked car.

"That I owe him," I said. "He thinks twenty years of dinner means he gets to decide what I tell you."

"Do you owe him?"

"I owe him a roof. I don't owe him you."

He unlocked the doors.

I did not get out.

"I'm going to the office," he said. "I have a lot of reading to do."

"I'll come with you."

"Mona."

"You told me to stay where you can see me."

A quiet, dry chuckle escaped him.

"I did say that."

Lowell's old corner office was on the second floor, behind the conference room, with a leather couch and a desk the size of a door.

Ansel had been in it for eight hours and had already made it look like his.

Every file was stacked in squared piles.

He turned on one lamp and walked to the window and stood with his back to me.

"You were the little one with the braids," he said. "The one who bit a boy for stepping on my shoe."

"He deserved it."

"He did."

"You told me not to cry at the fence."

"You didn't."

"I did, later, on the road."

He turned around.

In the lamplight the scar through his eyebrow looked white.

"I waited at that fence for you," he said.

"After they took the little one back inside, I told them I was waiting for my sister."

His jaw worked.

"I was ten. I said it to a policeman."

My throat closed.

"I said run," he said. "You ran."

He shook his head.

"I've been angry at you for twenty years for doing exactly what I told you."

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