Chapter 231

• Claire's pov
• I watched them one after another stand up from their seats—faces painted with shame, discomfort, and a touch of something I hadn’t seen on their faces since the beginning of this meeting: respect. For a moment, I only stood in silence, the printed documents still in their hands, my chest rising and falling too quickly because even though I had rehearsed courage, I hadn’t rehearsed what came after it.
• “Miss Carrington…” one of the older shareholders began. His tone was softer now, stripped of the arrogance he had carried when he tried to reduce me to nothing but an inexperienced girl out of place in a man’s world. “I—no—we owe you an apology. We underestimated you. We thought… we thought you were only here because of your father’s name. But after seeing this…” He held up the damning documents with trembling fingers. “After seeing the rot that has been growing under our own noses, I realize we owe you much more than respect. We owe you loyalty.”