My name is Avery Quinn. I’m thirty-four years old, and until that moment, I had almost convinced myself that coming to my sister’s grand opening in Charleston, South Carolina, had been a good idea.
My mother gave the table an apologetic smile.
“We’ve given up on her.”
My sister, Brooke, moved her chair an inch away from mine.
That tiny scrape against the polished floor hurt more than either sentence.
Across the table, the lead investor stopped reaching for her glass. She looked at me, then at the name printed on the evening’s program, then back at my face.
“Wait,” she said. “You’re the founder of Sterling?”
I knew the rest of that sentence.
I also knew why my father could not afford to hear it spoken in that room.
His smile faltered. Beside my plate, my grandmother’s hand rested over the corner of my place card. Earlier, she had turned it around so I could see what she had written beneath my name.
Glad you came.
Four words.
They were the reason I had not left when Mom asked me to avoid discussing my work. They were the reason I had swallowed the first insult, then the second.
But loving my grandmother did not require me to help my father lie.
I set down my glass.
Six days after the grand opening, my father slid a document across a conference table and said, “Sign this, and we can still keep this inside the family.”
The signature line was marked with a yellow tab. Above it was a statement claiming that services billed through his consulting company had been delivered and accepted.
I had never hired that company.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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