My Wife Hid Me at Work, Now I Own Her Company novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Event Overage

Russell finds that Allison moved his mother's transplant money into the party fund, shows the whole ballroom, resigns in front of forty coworkers, and Kayla hands him a hat's worth of their cash.

I called Allison from the hotel lobby.

It rang out.

I called again, and it went to voicemail.

I called nine times in four minutes.

Then a text came in, and it was one line.

*Submit it for approval.*

I had not even told her why I was calling.

She had not asked.

I opened the bank app again and tapped the history on the joint account.

Two days earlier, a transfer had gone out of it.

One hundred fifty thousand dollars, to the Draper Logistics operating account.

The memo said: event overage.

I read it three times.

The party had cost exactly what my mother's heart cost.

Allison had taken my savings to cover her own bill.

My hands were steady when I walked back to the elevator.

I think I was past shaking.

The ballroom doors were open, and the band was playing a slow song.

Brody was feeding Allison a piece of cake with a plastic fork.

Forty people were watching and smiling.

I walked to the middle of the dance floor and held my phone over my head.

"Excuse me," I said. "Can everyone look at this?"

The music stopped when the bandleader saw Allison's face.

"This is our joint savings account," I said. "Two years of my pay went into it for my mother's heart."

"Two days ago, Ms. Draper moved all of it to the company account to pay for this party."

Someone gasped near the bar.

Allison put her plate down.

"Russell," she said, very low. "Not here."

"Our company paid $150,000 for a man's birthday, and you paid the rest with my mother's money."

"Tonight a donor heart came in for her," I said. "I have until six in the morning to pay the deposit."

"And you're sending me to submit it for approval."

The word our had slipped out of my mouth, and I saw some of them catch it.

A few people looked at Allison, and then at me.

The woman from accounting put a hand over her mouth.

Allison's jaw worked.

"I'm going to put it back," she said. "Monday. First thing. I had a cash gap, and this was a temporary cover."

"The heart is tonight."

"Then take a loan against the house. Don't make a spectacle out of a timing problem."

She still would not say my name in that room.

"Ms. Draper, whose mother is sick?" a driver near the stage asked.

Allison did not answer.

I heard the rustle of the room doing the math.

Brody stepped forward, his hand easy on his glasses.

"Look, I'm sorry about whoever's mother," he said. "But people her age pass. It's nature, man."

"I'm not going to let a sob story ruin my night."

I looked at him for a long time.

I had never hit anyone in my life.

"Say that again," I said.

He took a half step back and looked to Allison.

Allison did not look at me at all.

She looked at the floor and said to the room, "Everyone, enjoy the party. Russell is leaving."

I took my badge out of my pocket and held it up.

"I resign, effective tonight."

"Don't be dramatic," she said. "You can't resign over a bank transfer."

"Watch me."

I put the badge on the cake table, between the candles and the plastic forks.

The whole room watched me do it.

I walked out through the doors without turning around.

I was crossing the lobby when I heard heels behind me.

It was Kayla, with her purse under one arm and a thick envelope in her hand.

"I wasn't going to let you go out of there with nothing," she said, out of breath.

She pushed the envelope into my chest.

"Open it."

Inside were stacks of cash and a few folded checks.

"Everyone put in while you were talking," she said. "The receiving team, the drivers, accounting. Even the cleaners from the night crew came up."

"There are forty people in there, and none of them ever met your mother."

"Thirty-one thousand, four hundred dollars," she said. "It's what we had."

I stood on the hotel steps with it in my hands.

Six years of being treated like nothing by the one person who should have defended me.

And forty people I barely knew had given what they had in four minutes.

I could not speak.

I thanked her with a hand on her shoulder, because it was all I had.

"Go," Kayla said, wiping her eyes. "Drive."

I ran for the car.

My phone buzzed against my leg before I reached it, and the screen said Allison.

The message was one line.

*Come back and apologize to Brody, and I'll consider the money.*

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