My Tribal Rule Said Marry Or Matchmake novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: The Futon

Breanne leaks the price sheet and costs the company $170,000, Bentley throws his card in Torrie's face, and his statement shows a hotel room the night her granny was in the hospital.

Page four was one paragraph long.

I'd written it at a card table in our first office, eating cold noodles.

No founder may transfer shares without the consent of the board. Any transfer made without it is void.

I read it twice by the light of the laptop.

Then I closed the lid and slept for three hours.

***

I went to work the next morning like nothing had happened.

I could walk away from Bentley.

I couldn't walk away from Ridgeline.

Sixty people had their rent riding on software I'd routed by hand on a whiteboard at twenty-three.

If I was leaving Saturday, I needed the place to run without me.

The elevator doors opened, and Sheree Thurman was standing right there.

She looked like she'd been waiting a while.

Sheree had been with us since we had nine employees and one microwave.

I'd seen her laugh off a lawsuit. I'd never seen her look sick.

"Torrie. We sent the Ohio proposal to Bentley last night for sign-off."

"Okay."

"Breanne said he was asleep and she'd handle it."

My stomach dropped before she finished.

"She forwarded our internal price sheet to the buyer. The bottom-line one. Every margin we've got."

"How bad?"

"They want twenty percent off. Our margin on that contract is thirty."

She took her red glasses off and rubbed her eyes.

"If we keep them, we lose a hundred and seventy thousand dollars. If we walk, we lose the grocery chain and every account they referred us."

Six months.

Sheree's team had spent six months on that grocery chain.

I'd flown to Columbus four times and eaten more bad chicken than any human should.

"Come with me," I said.

I pushed Bentley's door open without knocking.

Breanne was lying on the futon.

Bentley was crouched beside her, holding a bottle of orange juice with a straw in it.

I knew that futon.

He'd bought it our first year, off a guy in Pilsen, for forty dollars.

He'd dragged it into our first office so I'd stop sleeping on the floor under my desk.

"This is your lounge," he'd said back then. "Doctor's orders."

Now my ring was on the hand Breanne pressed to her forehead.

She sat up fast.

"Torrie, don't get the wrong idea. I fainted. I felt so guilty I couldn't breathe."

"Bentley was just helping me get my sugar up."

She called him Bentley now.

A year ago it had been Mr. Cromwell, with her eyes on the carpet.

I didn't answer her.

I laid Sheree's numbers on his desk and tapped the bottom line.

"A hundred and seventy thousand dollars," I said. "Who's covering it?"

Breanne's eyes filled right on cue.

"It's my fault. He's been so tired, and I didn't want to wake him."

"I'll go to Ohio myself. I'll beg the buyer on my knees if I have to."

She swung her legs off the futon, stood up, took two steps and folded onto the rug.

It was the slowest faint I'd ever seen.

She even turned her head so she landed on her good side.

Bentley dropped the juice and caught her by the elbows.

He settled her back on the cushions.

Then he looked at me.

"Do you always have to be this aggressive?"

"I'm asking who pays for her mistake."

"If the deal loses money, we walk from it. Simple."

"Walk from the account that feeds three others? Did you lose your mind?"

He rolled his eyes.

"You think so small, Torrie. Small-town thinking."

He pulled his company card out of his wallet and flicked it at me.

The corner caught me on the cheekbone and dropped onto the desk.

"It's a hundred and seventy. I'll cover her. Happy?"

My cheek stung.

Behind me, Sheree said something under her breath that would've gotten her fired anywhere else.

The sales team had drifted toward the glass. Nobody pretended to work.

I picked up the card and turned it over in my fingers.

This was the same man who used to split a five-dollar burger with me and complain about the tip.

"Sure," I said. "You'll cover it."

I took a blank page off his printer and wrote four lines.

Bentley Cromwell personally guarantees the $170,000 loss on the Ohio account. Payment due in thirty days. Not from company funds.

I turned it around and held out my pen.

"In front of witnesses," I said. "Since you're so generous."

He laughed.

Then he saw the faces through the glass.

Twenty people were watching their CEO get handed a bill for his girlfriend.

Breanne peeked out from behind her arm.

"Bentley, you don't have to."

That did it.

He snatched the pen and signed his name so hard it tore the paper.

"There. Now get out of my office."

I folded the page and slid it into my blazer.

"Sheree, make a copy for the file."

"Making three," she said.

I walked out past the sales floor with my cheek still burning.

Back at my desk, I logged into the expense system.

I was COO. I'd built the expense system.

I pulled the statement for the card he'd thrown in my face.

Three months of it loaded in a long gray column.

The very first line was a hotel in the Gold Coast.

The date was the night Granny went into the hospital with her heart.

The night I sat alone in a plastic chair in Lexington and called him six times.

He'd texted me back at midnight.

"Investor dinner. Can't talk. Love you."

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