Chapter 8 - The Lock Change
Brenda came in without waiting to be asked and shut the office door behind her.
“Lucas, you cannot freeze Mercer right now.”
Not hello. Not How’s Gwen. Not I’m sorry.
“You forced my pregnant wife under a dining table,” he said. “You forged my approvals. Start with why I should even be standing here listening to you.”
Brenda’s face tightened. “I did not forge anything. I handled things for you when you were too busy to handle them yourself.”
“That’s not an answer.”
She took two quick steps toward the desk. “Charlie is expecting a wire by tomorrow. If you stop the renewal now, it doesn’t just embarrass me. It triggers other things.”
The words hung between them.
Lucas heard them before he understood them.
“Other things,” he repeated.
Brenda glanced away, and for the first time in his life he saw her calculation fail in real time. “He has obligations tied to that warehouse. Short-term ones. He said once the contract renewed, he could clean it all up.”
“Did you put my company behind his obligations?”
Her silence was all the answer he needed.
Lucas opened his desk drawer, took out the house keys Brenda kept for “emergencies,” and set them on the blotter.
“You’re done at Dawson Freight. Your company card is shut off. Your office access is revoked. And you are not going back into my house.”
Brenda’s chin trembled with something that might have been rage or might have been fear. “After everything I sacrificed for you.”
He looked at her for a long second. “A sacrifice doesn’t buy you my wife, my child, or my signature.”
She left without taking the keys.
An hour later, sitting on Ava’s couch while Gwen ate dry toast and rubbed the side of her belly, Lucas told her about the wire.
Gwen stopped chewing.
“What wire?”
May you like
“I don’t know yet.”
She set the plate down carefully. “Then you need to find out before his debt becomes ours.”
