Free Web NovelChapter 265: I believe you’re in my seat
A small silence settled between them. Different from the silences of the earlier evening, not hollow, not heavy. Something that had warmth in it. The warmth of two people who had found their footing again after a very long time of stumbling.
"We walk in strong," Julian said. "Both of us. Not like people who have lost something. Like people who have already won."
Amara nodded slowly. "We make them nervous," she said. "Nervous people make mistakes."
"And when they make mistakes."
"We find our daughter," she said. Simply. Finally. Julian reached over and covered her hand with his. They sat like that for a while. Not talking. Just present. freewebnovel.cσ๓
Morning arrived without ceremony.
Julian was up first, as always. But this morning was different from yesterday morning, no heaviness in the shoulders, no weight in the feet. Something had shifted in the night. Purpose does that. It doesn’t take the pain away, but it gives the body somewhere to put itself.
He was dressed and standing at the mirror, adjusting his jacket, when Amara came out of the bathroom.
White.
She had chosen white, a suit that fit like it had been made for exactly this moment, clean and sharp and entirely without apology. Her hair was done. Her posture was everything. She looked like someone who had decided something and was now simply executing it.
Julian turned from the mirror. He looked at her for a moment without speaking. "Well," he said finally.
"Don’t," she said, but the corner of her mouth moved. He crossed the room, straightened his already straight lapel, and looked at her directly.
"Whatever happens today," he said quietly. "We come home to each other tonight."
"Yes," she said. "We do." He kissed her. Slow and certain. The kind of kiss that isn’t a goodbye but a before, a marking of the moment before something begins.
Then they went downstairs and got into separate cars. freewēbnoveℓ.com
Creed Tech’s building rose clean and glass-fronted in the morning light. Amara’s car pulled up, and she stepped out without pausing, without looking up at it the way people look up at things that intimidate them. She had been here before. In different capacities, in different seasons. But never like this.
James was already inside. He had been there since seven.
The shareholders were assembled in the main boardroom by the time she reached the floor. She could hear them through the glass, the low murmur of men who had been told there was a meeting without being told precisely why, the particular restless energy of people waiting for something they couldn’t prepare for.
And at the head of the table, in the chair he had occupied for years, as it had been built specifically to hold him, sat Sebastian Creed.
He was looking at his watch.
"I don’t know why we’re being kept waiting," he said to the room, the familiar edge of authority in his voice slightly more effort behind it than there used to be, but still practiced, still present.
"I am still the CEO of this company, and I would like to adjourn this meeting until someone can tell me what exactly..."
The boardroom door opened. Amara walked in.
The room adjusted immediately the way rooms always adjusted when she entered them, a subtle collective recalibration, eyes moving, postures shifting. She walked to the front without hurry, set her folder on the table, and looked around at the assembled shareholders with the calm expression of someone who had arrived exactly when she intended to.
"Gentlemen." Her voice filled the room without being raised. "I apologise for keeping you waiting." Her eyes moved just briefly, just a second to Seb.
He was staring at her. The watch was forgotten. She looked back at the room.
"Shall we begin?" she said. "I’d like to move the motion to elect a new Chief Executive Officer of Creed Tech."
The hands went up around the table one by one.
Not all at once, there was a brief moment where the room seemed to hold its breath, the way rooms do when something irreversible is about to happen, and everyone present knows it. And then the first hand. Then the second. Then the rest, following the weight of the majority, the way things always follow weight.
It was done in under a minute. Seb sat at the head of the table and watched it happen.
The confusion on his face moved through several stages, disbelief first, then the rapid mental arithmetic of a man trying to work out where the ground had shifted and when, and then something slower and more devastating as the pieces began to arrange themselves into a picture he recognised.
AP Enterprise. The majority shares. He looked at Amara. She was already looking at him.
"Well," she said pleasantly, to the room and no one in particular. "It appears we have a new CEO."
She picked up her folder from the table and walked unhurried, entirely composed, to the head of the table.
To his chair. She stopped in front of it and looked at him directly. "I believe you’re in my seat," she said.
The room was very quiet.
Seb stood slowly. The movement of a man whose legs were obeying out of muscle memory while the rest of him was still somewhere three minutes behind, trying to catch up.
He looked around the table at the shareholders who were carefully not looking back at him, at James standing near the door with the expression of a man watching something he had been waiting to watch for a long time.
"Security," Amara said, without raising her voice. "Please escort Mr Creed out."
Two men appeared at Seb’s elbow.
"Meeting adjourned, gentlemen," Amara said to the room, already moving the folder. "Thank you for your time."
The room began to empty. Chairs pushed back, quiet conversations starting up, the businesslike dispersal of people who had witnessed something significant and were already deciding how to discuss it elsewhere.
Seb didn’t move.
The security stood beside him but didn’t touch him. They didn’t need to. He wasn’t a physical threat right now. He was a man standing in the middle of a room that had just been his, looking at the woman sitting in his chair, and trying to find something to say that would make the last ten minutes not have happened.
"Amara."
She looked up from the folder.
"Why?" He said it quietly. Not the boardroom voice, not the Sebastian Creed who commanded half of Verenza’s voice. Just a man.
