Chapter 21: My Roof

The cup shattered against the piano lid, and cold tea sprayed across my sleeve.

I did not step back.

Cormick was already between us, with one hand flat on Davis's chest.

"That is enough," he said.

"Take your hand off me."

"No."

Sixty guests stood in complete silence.

A shard of china spun on the floor and came to rest at the banker's shoe.

I looked at the wet cuff of my dress and then I looked up.

"Thank you, Dad," I said. "Everyone saw that."

The board member from the gala cleared his throat.

"Davis," he said. "I don't know what's true in all this."

He looked at the broken china.

"I know what I just saw you do."

He turned to the room.

"As a director of Hadfield and Lowry, I'm calling for the president to step down tonight. Pending the court's findings."

"You can't," Davis said. "You need a vote."

"Sixty percent of the voting shares is standing beside that piano," said the older man, quietly. "Mrs. Eberly?"

Everyone looked at me.

I lifted the silver pen in my hand.

"I vote yes," I said.

That was the whole vote.

Davis stared at the board member he had golfed with for twenty years, and the man did not look away.

Cormick's lawyer came out of the crowd with a slim folder.

He had been standing by the cake all evening, drinking club soda.

"Mr. Hadfield," he said. "This is notice that the nine million dollar note has been in default since the fifteenth of December."

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