The Hidden Goddess Who Made Him Beg novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: The Lobby

"Don't go in there," Lucian said.

"They're asking where to find me."

"I'll tell them you're in Cleveland."

"I'm not hiding from Imogen Eustis twice."

I took the stairs down all twelve floors with him close behind me, and we walked to Bulfinch Tower on foot.

The lobby of Bulfinch Group was forty feet of white marble.

I had crossed it every morning for two years with a coffee and a clipboard.

Today it was full.

Three hundred of the building's staff stood in the gallery above, hands on the rail, watching.

Imogen waited at the center with her father, a large man in a camel coat who owned half the cranes on the waterfront.

Beside them stood two detectives in rain-dark raincoats.

"There she is," Imogen cried. "That is the woman I told you about!"

I walked up to the detectives and took my driver's license out of my bag.

I held it up where the gallery could see.

DELPHINE MARSH ORME.

"My mother's maiden name is Marsh," I said. "It's my legal middle name. I worked here under it for two years and under my own signature on every form."

The older detective read the license, then his notes, then the license again.

"Miss Orme, the complaint alleges you obtained employment under an assumed name."

"Is it assumed if it's on my birth certificate?"

He cleared his throat.

"Not as such."

"Then I'd like to make a complaint of my own." I turned to Imogen. "On Thursday, Miss Eustis entered my grandmother's home uninvited with a personnel file that was never hers. She read it aloud to fourteen people."

"That's slander!"

"It's theft of private records, ma'am," said the younger detective, who had perked up.

Imogen's father stepped forward, red to the ears.

"Now see here."

"She called me a whore in front of the Beacon Hill Garden Society," I said, clearly, so the gallery could hear. "I'd like it on the record that I'm not."

A laugh went through the staff above us, quick and startled, and was shushed.

Imogen's face went tight and white.

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