Chapter 13: The Sparrow Votes No

Ray held the door wide for me and bowed me in.

I walked past him into the clubhouse with the sparrow outside my jacket and Mace one step behind my shoulder.

Thirty members stood around the long table.

I knew most of them by their first names, because I had fried their eggs for years.

Not one of them looked at me except Gage.

"Mal," he said, low. "Don't do this here."

"You called me dramatic," I said. "I'm only starting."

Ray settled into the chair at the head of the table, the one beside the empty chair, and laid his hand on the gavel.

"Sit down, Mallory," he said. "Let the men finish their business."

"That's my father's chair."

"That's furniture."

He turned to the room, and his voice went warm and easy, the voice he used when he handed out turkeys at Christmas.

"We're all family here. The developer's offer stands, and it's more money than this club has seen in forty years."

"Hands for the sale of the land."

Hands went up around the table.

They went up slowly, and some of them didn't meet his eyes, but they went up.

"Twenty," Ray said, counting. "Twenty-two. That's the table."

He lifted the gavel.

I unclasped the chain at my neck with fingers that wouldn't stay steady, and I walked the length of the room.

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Called Me Dramatic, So I Took the Club from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.