Chapter 9 - THE PRICE OF STAYING
“You're on speaker,” Daniel said. “Claire and Ruth are here.”
A pause.
Then Vanessa's voice softened.
“Good. Maybe someone can talk sense into you.”
“Did you send the photograph of Lucy's school?”
“I don't know what you're talking about.”
“The police have it.”
“Then let them handle it. I'm talking about our future.”
Daniel looked at Claire.
“There is no our future.”
For the first time, Vanessa lost her polished tone.
“You think she loves you? She brought a child to a donor event and dropped a box in front of cameras.”
“You grabbed my wrist,” Claire said. “You knocked it out of my hand.”
“Nobody will remember that.”
Ruth spoke. “The footage will.”
Vanessa ended the call.
By noon, a gossip site had Claire's name. By one, reporters were outside her apartment building. Someone called her former employer asking whether she had ever stolen money there.
Anna read the headline aloud, then stopped halfway.
DISGRACED EX-EMPLOYEE RETURNS WITH SECRET CHILD.
Claire took the phone.
There it was again. A stranger's version of her life, already being treated as fact.
“They'll put Lucy's face everywhere.”
Ruth contacted the outlets, demanding that the child's identity and image be protected. Daniel's public statement named no child. It confirmed that evidence raised serious questions about Claire's dismissal and that he had approved it without speaking to her.
He didn't call it a misunderstanding.
At the emergency board meeting, Martin sat across from him with a neat stack of papers.
“You're jeopardizing thousands of jobs over a personal attachment.”
Daniel placed his signed authorization on the table.
“Five years ago, that argument was enough to make me stop asking questions.”
“We have duties to this institution.”
“Then stop using it as a hiding place.”
The board placed Daniel on temporary leave. Ruth secured an outside investigation and a preservation order within the company. Martin was excluded from supervising the review, but the directors postponed a decision about his own suspension.
He watched Daniel surrender his executive badge.
“Hope it was worth it.”
Daniel left without answering.
In the elevator, Ruth's phone rang.
The outside records warehouse had located box 418.
May you like
It had been signed out three days earlier.
The destination on the delivery slip was Vaughn Holdings.
