Chapter 7: The Empty Safe

Dalton's POV

The motion failed six to five.

I stood at the foot of the boardroom table and watched Monica gather her certificates without hurrying.

She did not look at me once.

The chair stopped beside me.

"You've made a mistake," he said quietly, as the room emptied. "You'll understand that when you've calmed down."

"I'm calm," I said.

"Belinda won't be pleased."

It was a strange thing for him to say.

I filed it away under things I'd think about later, and I went home.

The penthouse was dim.

Archie was asleep in his yellow room with one arm hanging off the bed.

I stood in the doorway longer than I needed to.

He was four years old.

He called me Dal because the first word he ever tried to say to me was my name, and it came out short.

I had stood in that doorway every night for three years.

I had never once looked at his face without feeling two things at the same time.

Love, and a clean, cold, specific dread.

Belinda was in the kitchen with a glass of wine.

"How did the meeting go?" she asked.

"The motion failed."

"Good," she said, lightly. "I told them it would. You voted with Monica."

"Yes."

"You voted against the chair."

She set the glass down.

"I didn't know you could," she said.

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Sent Me Away for Three Years. Now My Divorce Has Him Panicking. from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.