Chapter 17: Eighteen Percent

Dashiell's POV

Vane had done his arithmetic well.

On Monday morning there were nine chairs at my boardroom table, and Vane had counted four of them before he walked in.

His own was the first, and eighteen percent of my company sat in it.

Three more belonged to men who owed him money or favors.

Four were mine, and the ninth chair belonged to nobody.

"Gentlemen," said Vane, and he stood to speak like a man at a funeral. "I take no pleasure in this."

I sat at the head of the table and let him.

"Our chairman put an employee under his personal protection by Alpha's word, and entered it in the minutes."

Vane turned a page.

"This week he gave away a third of our north-shore lane, for five years, to a failing cannery. He did it without a vote."

"It was my lane to give," I said.

"It was the company's lane, Dashiell. The board has a right to ask why."

"Because the cannery needed it."

"Because of a girl," said Vane, softly. "A girl on the sixtieth floor who is, I understand, carrying a child."

Nobody at the table looked at me.

I had known he would say it.

I had not known how it would sound with Wynne's name left out and her child put in.

"The Alpha of Tidewater," Vane went on, "has been entangled in a Howling Bay pact, a public scandal and a personal affair with a junior employee."

He looked at me.

"And he has put Crane Harbor's money behind all three."

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