Chương 14
“Are the girls heirs to Drake Industries?”
“Did the city know?”
Griffin stepped beside Sloan.
Daniel and building security kept the reporters several feet away, but the noise remained overwhelming.
Sloan stopped at the bottom of the steps.
Griffin looked at her. “You don’t have to speak.”
“I know.”
She faced the cameras.
“My daughters are children,” she said. “They are not evidence of a conspiracy, corporate assets, or public entertainment. Their father and I are working privately to build a relationship that should have begun years ago. The failures that delayed it belong to adults. Leave the children out of them.”
A reporter shouted, “Will you marry Mr. Drake?”
Hazel made a disgusted sound.
Sloan nearly laughed.
Griffin stepped toward the microphones.
“No custody action has been filed or authorized by me,” he said. “I did not know my daughters existed. That does not excuse the choices that made me unreachable. Ms. Avery did not request my company’s withdrawal or any financial benefit. The city’s review should proceed without pressure from me, my family, or Drake Industries.”
“What will you do if the Drake bid loses?”
“Accept it.”
“What will you do if Ms. Avery’s bid loses?”
“Accept that too.”
Conrad, standing beneath the courthouse awning, heard the answer.
So did the board.
That evening, Griffin was removed as chief executive by a vote of seven to four.
He retained his shares but lost operational control.
Daniel arrived at the penthouse with the news while Sloan was making grilled cheese sandwiches.
Hazel stared at Griffin. “Did they fire you?”
“Yes.”
“Are you still rich?”
Sloan turned from the stove. “Hazel.”
“What? It matters to him.”
Griffin loosened his tie. “I’m still rich.”
“How rich?”
“Hazel.”
“Very,” Griffin said.
She considered this. “Then it isn’t the same as regular fired.”
“No.”
Iris dipped the corner of her sandwich into tomato soup. “Are you sad?”
“Yes.”
“Do you miss the job or winning?”
He looked at her.
“Both.”
“That’s honest,” Sloan said.
He sat at the kitchen table. For the first time since the night of Sloan’s collapse, he appeared tired in a way money could not disguise.
“What will you do?” Hazel asked.
“I don’t know.”
“You could help Mom with the project.”
“No,” three voices said at once.
Griffin raised both hands.
Mrs. Chen arrived carrying fried bananas and a broken restaurant receipt printer she wanted Griffin to inspect because Hazel had told her he could fix regular things.
“I said tires,” he protested.
“A machine is a machine.”
“It absolutely is not.”
“You have no job,” Mrs. Chen said. “You have time.”
Griffin spent forty minutes at the kitchen counter with the printer, a screwdriver, and an online manual. He failed twice, swore once under his breath, and finally discovered a strip of receipt paper caught beneath the roller.
Mrs. Chen tested it.
The machine printed a long ribbon of meaningless symbols.
“You made it speak French,” she said.
“That is not French.”
“It is not a receipt.”
Hazel laughed so hard she slid from her chair.
Even Iris smiled.
Sloan stood near the sink, watching Griffin stare at the malfunctioning printer with wounded concentration.
Nothing had been solved. The hearing had not restored the financing. The twins remained angry. Griffin had lost his position. Conrad had not apologized. The future was a crowded field of lawyers, school meetings, therapy appointments, and difficult Thursdays.
Yet the kitchen felt less dangerous than the silence that had preceded it.
The independent review took seven weeks.
During that time, Sloan reduced her workload under threat from her doctor, Mateo, Mrs. Chen, and both daughters. She hated everyone equally for three days, then began sleeping through the night.
Griffin rented an apartment ten minutes from the penthouse instead of asking the twins to visit his glass house on Mercer Island. He furnished one bedroom for Hazel and one for Iris, then left both rooms mostly empty so they could choose what belonged there.
Hazel selected dark green walls and glow-in-the-dark stars.
Iris chose pale gray and requested no decorative insects because “people always choose butterflies when they know nothing.”
They did not stay overnight for another two months.
Griffin attended parenting classes where he was the only billionaire and not the only frightened man. He learned how to braid hair badly, pack lunches inadequately, and listen without converting every complaint into a plan.
He still failed often.
He missed Hazel’s school presentation after a board-related legal meeting ran long. She refused his calls for two days. When he sent an apology and a photograph of the empty chair he had reserved for himself, Sloan told him the image looked manipulative.
“It was how I felt,” he said.
“Then say how you felt.”
“I did. With the photograph.”
“Use words.”
He used words.
Hazel replied that she was still mad.
He wrote back, I know.
Iris tested him differently. She asked questions about his money, his father, and every harmful project Drake Industries had completed. Griffin answered what he knew and researched what he did not. When she discovered he had understated the number of tenant complaints connected to one development, she accused him of lying.
He had not lied intentionally. It did not matter.
He corrected himself and waited for trust to return.
It did not return immediately.
Conrad requested to meet the twins.
Sloan said no.
Griffin agreed.
Three weeks later, Conrad sent handwritten letters to Hazel and Iris. Sloan read them first. They contained no apology, only an invitation to understand their family history.
Sloan gave the letters to Griffin.
“What do you want to do?” she asked.
He read them and tore them in half.
“You could have let them decide.”
“They can decide when he writes something that acknowledges what he did.”
“You’re protecting them.”
“Yes.”
“Or controlling access?”
The question angered him.
Then he recognized it.
He smoothed the torn pages on the table.
“I don’t know,” he said.
May you like
They asked Nina.
The mediator suggested returning the letters with a request for age-appropriate accountability. Conrad refused for two months. Then he sent a second set.
