The CEO's Unwanted Wife novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: Stanford Comes to Zurich

The institute lobby was glass and pale wood, with a reception desk where six people stood pretending to wait for elevators.

Stanford Merrow stood in the middle of it in a charcoal overcoat, with a leather case in one hand.

He looked like a man who had not slept in two days and had decided to make that look expensive.

"Linnea," he said. "There you are."

"Mr. Merrow."

"We were family not long ago. Stanford will do."

"What do you want?"

"A conversation. Privately."

"We can have it here."

The postdoc from the next bench had drifted out of the lab behind me with her arms folded.

Two more colleagues followed her, and then the director himself, a tall man who raised his eyebrows and said nothing.

Stanford glanced at them and then at me.

He decided to go on.

He set the case on the reception desk and took out a slim envelope.

"This is a cashier's check," he said. "I thought it was the right form."

I stared at it.

It was pale green paper with a bank's seal and a long row of zeros in a careful hand.

"It's for four million dollars. In return you sign a short statement saying that my son's confession is a private grief, that the tape was obtained illegally, and that you have no wish to see it used."

Somebody behind me drew a breath.

"Four million," I said.

"It's generous."

"What did you pay for my parents?"

His face did not move. "I don't recall the figure."

"Of course you don't."

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