Home / Romance / Five Years As A DoorMat Wife: Her Time To Shine / Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

All Chapters of Five Years As A DoorMat Wife: Her Time To Shine: Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

70 Chapters

Chapter 61

Chapter 61"Seris."Julian's voice. Low. Careful."People are watching you," Julian said. "You need to do something with your face.""There's nothing wrong with my face.""Your face is doing a thing."Seris made his face stop doing the thing.Across the room, Theron had finally let go of Silver's hand. He was saying something to her, too quiet to hear. Silver's twin sister was standing right next to them with her mouth open, not even pretending not to listen. Silver said something back. Short. Seris could not read it.Then Theron laughed, that same easy laugh he had at sixteen, and the people around them laughed too, because that was what people did around Theron.Seris looked away.His eyes went, without him meaning them to, to the far side of the room. To the ice swans.Kate was there.She was standing between two of her brothers in dark green, and she was looking right at him. Not at Silver. Not a

Chapter 62

Chapter 62The quartet started playing again about five minutes after Seris walked out onto the terrace.Kate noticed both things. She noticed the music because it was a waltz, slow and old-fashioned, the kind of song that made rich people suddenly remember they had taken dance lessons as children. And she noticed Seris because she had not stopped noticing him since he walked in.She was not proud of that. But it was true."Well," James said beside her, holding a tiny plate of tiny food. "That was a show.""It was a greeting," Kate said."It was a hand kiss in front of three hundred people.""Some people are very friendly.""Kate. He walked past Seris's actual hand.""I saw.""Everyone saw.""Then you don't need to tell me about it," Kate said, and took a sip of her sparkling water.Theodore, on her other side, had the decency to say nothing. He just ate a small crab cake and looked at the ceiling li

Chapter 63

Chapter 63Kate laughed despite herself.She was having fun. She noticed it the way you notice the sun coming out after a week of rain, a little surprised, a little careful. Theron was easy to talk to. He was quick. He flirted like it was a game he was good at, and he didn't seem to mind that she flirted back badly."Your dress is a good color," he said."Thank you. It's green.""I know it's green. I meant it's a good green.""There are bad greens?""So many bad greens. You'd be amazed." His eyes were bright. "Most people would wear red to a party like this. Or black. Something safe. You wore something that says you don't care what they think.""I just liked the dress.""That's what I said. You don't care what they think."She shook her head, smiling. "You're very good at this.""At dancing?""At talking.""I've had practice." The song was slowing down, getting close to the end. He leaned in a

Chapter 64

Chapter 64The hospital smelled like soap and old flowers.Theron hated that smell. He had hated it since he was nine years old, sitting in a plastic chair outside a room just like this one, waiting for a doctor to come out and say his mother was gone. Twenty years later, the smell was the same. The chairs were the same. Only the person in the bed had changed."You're late," his stepfather said."I'm early," Theron said. "Visiting hours start at ten. It's nine fifty-two.""Then you're early and annoying.""That sounds more like me."Richard Hale almost smiled. Almost. These days his face did not move much. The stroke two years ago had taken most of the left side, and the second one in the spring had taken most of what was left of his strength. He was sixty-two and looked eighty. His hands, which used to be big and loud and always moving, lay flat on the white blanket like they belonged to someone else.Theron pulled the plastic

Chapter 65

Chapter 65"Your grandfather. Old Edward Ashford. Thomas Winters." Richard closed his eyes for a second, like he was looking at something far away. "Forty years ago, they were friends. Good friends. They bought the land together when it was cheap. Harold put up most of the money, because Ashford and Winters were both short that year. And then the other two got sentimental.""Sentimental how?" "They wanted their families joined. A grandson from one, a granddaughter from the other. They put the land in trust as a wedding present. A very big one." Richard opened his eyes. "Harold agreed. On one condition. If the wedding never happened, the money he put in would come back to him. Not as money. As the land.""And nobody remembers this?""Edward Ashford remembers. Thomas Winters is dead. Harold remembers." Richard's mouth twisted slightly. "And I think Edward Ashford was hoping nobody else would ever read page nine."Theron sat back.

Chapter 66

Chapter 66The sign went up at seven in the morning.Silver stood on the pavement across the street with a paper cup of coffee in her hand and watched two men on a ladder fix it to the brick above the door. It was not a big sign. She had not wanted a big sign. Just one word in clean white letters on a dark blue board, with a small silver line under it like the edge of a frozen lake.*Winterlight.*"It's crooked," Skylia said beside her."It's not crooked.""The left side is lower.""The left side is fine."Skylia tilted her head. Then she tilted it the other way. "Okay, now it looks fine. But that's only because I'm standing like this.""Then stand like that forever.""I will if I have to," Skylia said. "For the company."Silver laughed. It came out of her before she could stop it, small and bright in the cold morning air, and one of the men on the ladder looked down and smiled.It was a week since t

Chapter 67

Chapter 67The Harbor Street project belonged to Delmont Property Group.Delmont was not huge, but it was solid. Family-run. Forty years in the city. The owner, Frank Delmont, was a big grey-haired man who laughed loudly and asked good questions. Silver had spent three months winning him over. Three meetings. Two site visits in the freezing rain. One long dinner where he told her about his father, who had run a fruit stall on Harbor Street when Frank was a boy."I want that street to have stalls again," he had said, very quietly, near the end of that dinner. "Real ones. Not fake ones for photos. Can you do that?""Yes," Silver had said.He had shaken her hand across the table. "Then let's do it."The contract was signed three weeks ago. Winterlight's fee from Harbor Street would pay all six salaries for the first year. It was their biggest client by a long way. It was, if Silver was honest, almost their only client.At eleven forty-fi

Chapte 68

Chapter 68Seris found out on a Wednesday, from a spreadsheet.That was the stupid part. Not a phone call. Not a whisper in a hallway. Not his grandfather sitting across a long table with a folder and that slow, careful voice. Just a line on a weekly partnership report that his assistant put on his desk every Wednesday at eight, the way she had for four years.He almost didn't read it.He was tired. He had not slept well since the gala. Every morning there was a new headline, and every headline had his name somewhere near the word *replaced*. He had stopped reading the papers. He had stopped going on his phone before nine. He drank his coffee black and read the reports because the reports, at least, were just numbers.Page three. New partnerships, signed this week.*Delmont Property Group — Harbor Street Market Hall — Joint Development Agreement. Approved: C. Ashford.*He read it twice.He knew the name Delmont. Eve

Chapter 69

Chapter 69If he called Delmont, that was a complication. That was him standing between his grandfather and Silver Winters in a way that everyone would see. Cornelius did not like being crossed. He did not shout about it. He did not argue. He simply moved, quietly, somewhere else, somewhere it would hurt more.And Seris knew exactly where he would move."There's more," Julian said.Seris looked at him."Morrow Capital was bought last week. The company that went after Crest Transit in the spring.""I know. I saw it.""Do you know who bought it?""Calloway.""Calloway," Julian agreed. "So Kate already has one family with real money coming after her. If Grandfather decides to help them, even a little, even just by looking the other way—"He didn't finish.He didn't need to.Seris sat back down at his desk. He put his hands flat on the wood and looked at them.There was another thing too. A

Chapter 70

Chapter 70The quarterly board meeting started at ten.Kate was there at nine-fifteen, which was early even for her. She liked to be in the room first. She liked to choose her seat, set out her papers, and pour her own water before anybody else came in and the air filled up with handshakes and small talk. It made her feel like the room was hers before the meeting began.Today she sat at the head of the long table, where she had sat for six months now.She had a lot to say. Crest Transit. Calloway Group buying Morrow Capital. Three different accounts quietly buying up shares again, just like in the spring, but with much more money behind them this time. She had spent the whole weekend with Obi and Preet building a defence plan. She had slides. She had numbers. She had a list of every Crest Transit shareholder who might be tempted by a big offer, and what it would take to keep each one.She was ready.At nine forty, the door opened.It

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