The Outfit Clash: I'm Told to Strip novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: The Recording

Tyler walked the whole center aisle with two thousand people watching.

Nobody stopped him.

Hunter half rose out of his front-row seat.

"Ty," he said. "What are you doing?"

Tyler didn't look at him.

He stopped at the foot of the stage steps and looked up at the vice chair.

"I'd like to speak," he said. "I'm a student. Tyler Mott. I picked up the jackets."

The vice chair looked at the trustees.

The oldest trustee lifted one finger off her cane.

"Let the boy talk," she said.

Tyler climbed the steps.

I stepped back from the lectern and let him have it.

His hands were shaking so hard the phone rattled on the wood.

"Mr. Sterne's driver picked me up yesterday afternoon," he said into the microphone. "He took me to the house. Mr. Sterne offered me a job after graduation and a week in Florida starting today. He took my phone to 'keep it safe.' He had my number shut off."

A sound went through the room.

Hunter's father didn't move.

"I said yes," Tyler said. "I ate dinner there. I slept in the guest room."

"At five this morning I climbed out the window and walked eleven miles here. I had this in my sock."

He held up the old phone with the cracked case.

Somebody in the balcony laughed in disbelief, and then started clapping, and stopped.

"Every Friday I drove them to the Sterne outlet in Hartford," Tyler said. "Vice President Sterne texted me the orders."

He plugged the phone into the cable on the lectern.

A van sheet came up on the screen behind him. Dates, counts, two initials at the bottom. P.S.

Then a text from a number saved as "P."

"Sizes for Sat. 12 men's. Lining in blue. Same as the girl's box."

Patrice was still standing at her lectern stage left.

Her hand had closed around the edge of it.

"That's fabricated," she said.

"There's forty-one of them," Tyler said. "You can have them all."

Then he looked down at the front row.

At Hunter.

"There's one more," he said. "Hunter sent it to me on convocation morning. Before he saw her on the quad."

Hunter went white.

"Don't," he said. "Ty. Don't you dare."

Tyler pressed play.

Hunter's voice filled the auditorium, loud and bored and pleased with itself.

"Ty. You see the MBA girl by the library? In my suit? My suit."

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