The 23rd Deletion Bride novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: My Name

Linnea's POV

At noon on Friday the plaza outside the Amory Group tower was full.

Six hundred employees stood on the stone in the sun, because the board had given them the hour off.

Behind them were reporters, and a camera crew with a light on a pole.

At the front, a small stage had been set up under the tower's name.

Dalton stood on it alone, in a plain dark suit, with no podium and no notes.

On the big screen above him a counter in the corner read 3.1 million people watching.

He had lost weight since the atrium.

Hattie stood on my left with her arms folded, looking as though she wanted to throw something.

On my right was the gray-haired board member, who had said she would not miss this for her pension.

Cullen had stopped at the edge of the crowd.

"I'll be here," he said.

"I know."

"You go up alone. It's your face they came for."

I had told him to say exactly that, and I was still grateful to hear it.

Dalton saw me come through the crowd, and the whole plaza turned to watch him see me.

"Linnea," he said into the microphone. "Thank you for coming."

I said nothing.

"I'm not going to ask you for anything today," he said. "I want to say it first, so you know."

"I'm going to read you something."

He took a sheet of paper from his jacket.

"These are the twenty-three dates I had your name removed. I wrote them down myself."

"The first was a charity dinner that spring. You'd bought a green dress for it."

"The ninth was our anniversary."

"The fourteenth was the company's holiday dinner. You stood outside the hotel for an hour, in the cold, and I watched you from the lobby window."

He read them one at a time, with the date and the place.

His voice kept breaking, and he kept starting again.

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