My Husband Faked My Funeral. I Came Back For Everything. Chapter 07

My Husband Faked My Funeral. I Came Back For Everything. Chapter 07 – 1 Lack the Anatomy

Monday morning my unit crowded into our kitchen to watch me put on the Commander’s jacket for the first time.

Charcoal, with silver at the collar. Cut for a man. Marisol had taken it in herself at 2

a.m.

“Coffee,” I said, and Ezra put a mug in my hand, and June said what everyone was thinking.

“Commander. Every partner in that room is expecting a man.”

“Last I checked,” I said, “I still lack the anatomy.”

“You’ve got the balls, though,” Priya said.

I was still laughing when I walked into the partners’ room eleven minutes late.

Eleven partners. Director Moss. Augustus Sable at the head of the table. And to his left, a man about thirty-four with a boxer’s nose and the stillest hands I’ve ever seen, who could only be Roman Voss.

Every head turned.

“Apologies for the delay, sir,” I said. “One of my officers needed reminding that I lack the necessary anatomy to be male.”

Somebody dropped a pen.

“Commander Vale,” I said, and nodded to the room. “It won’t happen again.”

Sable kept a completely straight face. His eyes did not.

“Commander Vale,” he said. “Congratulations to you and your unit on certifying two

weeks early.” Movement around the table. “Roman Voss, Unit One.”

Voss shook my hand. “How did your people take the news that you weren’t a man?”

“One of them observed that I have the balls anyway.”

Two partners choked. Voss lost his composure completely, which I enjoyed more than I should have.

Then, four seats down, Halloran leaned back in his chair, looked at me the way a man looks at a menu, and said to the partner beside him quietly, but not quietly enough, because I have been listening to men who don’t know I’m there since I was twenty-two:

“Well. That explains the rumor about the founder’s taste.”

“Would you excuse me one moment, sir,” I said pleasantly. “There’s something I forgot to do.”

–

I walked the length of that table and put everything I had into a right hook – every hour of a year alone on a third floor, every night in Room 12, every six seconds of Vivienne Ashford smiling under a veil.

Halloran went down like a dropped coat.

The room came out of its chairs. Nobody reached me.

I stood over him while he tried to get up, and my voice came out so quiet the men at the far end had to lean in.

“On Friday you told an officer of this House that you’d file a false competency note unless she got on her knees. If you ever do that again, the founder will be the least of your problems. Are we clear?”

He stopped trying to get up,

“Commander Vale.” Sable’s hand landed on my shoulder, warm and unhurried. Explain.

I did. Friday. Nadia. The doorway. The hour. The threat.

“And I’d like to ask this room,” I finished, “how many women have been quietly written up as unstable in twenty-two years by men they said no to.”

There was a long, terrible silence.

“Moss,” Sable said. “Take him out.”

Two men took Halloran by the arms, and I watched him go and felt absolutely nothing.

“After this session,” Sable told the table, “I will speak to each of you privately. If any of you have used these methods

it will not be dismissal. It will be a

–

and I will find out

–

prosecution.”

Nobody breathed.

We sat down and worked. Two open matters: one resolved, and one that had been open two years – the Delacroix estate. Two families, one nineteenth-century property, four hundred million in litigation, two units failed, and now a dead lawyer and a threatened judge.

“Why do they both want it?” I asked.

Silence.

Sable turned pages. Turned them again. Then he looked up with an expression I’d remember for a long time.

“There is no reason in this file,” he said slowly. “In two years, nobody asked.”

“May I take it?” –

He slid it down the table without a single question.

The partners filed out. I gathered my stack. And at the door, Sable said quietly:

“Ms. Hart.”

I froze.

“Your brother has written to this House eleven times in fourteen months,” he said. “Every letter was intercepted at the Coldwater post office. I have all eleven in my desk.”