Skye
“Suga mama, put that tablet up and get your shoes on. It’s time to go.”
“You be lowkey hating on my baby. I’ll carry her so she can watch her tablet. Grab her shoes.”
“Sir, I love this girl dad persona, but we want her to be independent, a leader, and a princess. Find some balance, or both of you are getting popped.”
“Cady, shoes. Now,” I said, rubbing my temple, as Cadence took off to get her shoes.
“I’m sorry if this was too much for you. We can skip this board meeting and go home.”
“Where is home, Ducane? And I’ve had this headache for a few weeks. I’m tired. I want to cry and don’t know why.”
He didn’t answer right away. He just reached out, pulled me down into his lap, and wrapped both arms around me like he could hold the tired right out of my body if he squeezed hard enough. I let my head drop against his shoulder and closed my eyes.
“Home is wherever we want that shit to be.” His hand moved up and down my back.
“Home is with you and Cadence, but I want to be wherever my family is.” He paused, careful.
“I’m not asking you to pick, Skye. I told you that already.
Coupeville’s not going anywhere. This is just... more. Both. Can you do both?”
“Yeah.” I breathed it out against his neck, some of the weight easing off me just from him holding me like this. “I can do both. But if we’re doing both, I want a real house in Coupeville. Something that’s ours. Something built for a family that’s all the way here now.”
“Already on it.” He kissed the top of my head. “Lola’s had three properties lined up for two weeks. I just didn’t want to scare you off.”
I lifted my head to look at him.
“You already—”
“Ready!” Cadence came barreling back in, shoes on the wrong feet, laces flopping loose, tablet tucked under her arm like a football. “I got my shoes on, Daddy. See?”
Ducane looked down at her feet, then back at me, fighting a smile.
“Almost, baby. Almost.”
By the time we made it to the firm an hour later, Cadence’s shoes were tied, my headache had dulled a little, and I hadn’t said another word about the house.
There wasn’t time. Lola met us at the elevator with a coloring book already tucked under her arm and led Cadence straight to the receptionist’s desk without either of them missing a beat.
That left just me, standing outside a boardroom door.
“You look good, baby, and we did it again.”
We looked down and laughed. Black suit. Black tie.
I’d gone with black also. Fitted trousers, a silk blouse tucked behind a gold designer belt. Everything was new off the rack in that closet he’d stocked. I wanted to feel sharp, put together, like a woman who belonged in a boardroom instead of one bracing to be dragged into someone else’s war.
“We’ve been doing that since day one. Ain’t once planned it.” He reached over and straightened my collar, unnecessary, just an excuse to touch me. “Guess some things just line up.”
“They do. Are you nervous?” I asked, looking him over.
“Not at all. Just something I gotta do.”
“I’ll be out here when you’re done.”
I’d planned on standing near the door, in case this went the way I thought it might. Cadence was up front with Lola, coloring at the receptionist’s desk, and some part of me had already mapped an exit route in case things got ugly and I needed to get to her fast.
Ducane caught my arm before I made it three steps toward the wall.
“Where are you going?”
“I figured I’d hang back. Let you handle this.”
“Nah.” He grabbed my hand and walked me into the room. He pulled out the chair at the far end of the table, the one across from where he’d be standing, and just looked at me until I understood it wasn’t a suggestion. “You sit right here.”
“Ducane, I don’t need to be front and center for—”
“Skye.” He said my name, shutting me up. “You’re not hanging back in nothing that concerns this family ever again. You belong at this table. Sit down.”
I sat, and Ducane placed a kiss on my forehead. “Your headache better?”
“A little,” I said as he leaned in to kiss my lips softly. I was so happy no one was in here with us now. Our tongues wrestled with one another until—
A throat cleared, pulling us from the trance we’d been in.
Ruben walked in and didn’t even acknowledge us at first. The headache only grew worse, and so did the nausea. I wasn’t exactly in the mood.
I folded my hands on the table and told my stomach to behave for a little while longer.
“Ducane.” Ruben took his seat at the head. “Let’s not drag this out. I’ve got an important lunch with a client.”
“We won’t be long.” Ducane didn’t sit. He stood tall at the end of the table. My husband. Cadence’s father. Calm and immovable.
Ruben’s eyes finally landed on me.
“Why is she at this table?”
“Because she can be.” Ducane opened the folder in front of him and slid a single page down the table.
“Effective this morning, Skye Simmons holds a twenty percent voting interest in Shane & Simmons, transferred from my personal shares. Which, as you know, were transferred to me by my mother a year ago.”
“What?” Ruben and I said at the same time.
I looked at Ducane.
“What are you talking about?”
“Baby, hear me out.”
He never took his eyes off me.
“For years, people in this family made you believe you weren’t enough. That you didn’t belong in rooms like this. That loving you was somehow beneath me.”
He shook his head once.
“They looked at your bank account. Your last name. Where you came from and made up their minds before they ever got to know you. And I let it happen.”
The room felt smaller.
“It cost us. Six years. My daughter’s first steps. Holidays. Birthdays. Time I’ll never get back.”
He slid the paperwork another inch toward Ruben.
“I can’t change any of that. But somebody’s gonna pay for it.”
His eyes finally left mine.
They settled on his father.
Ruben shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
“Starting today, my wife owns twenty percent of this firm. She has a vote. She has a seat at this table.”
Ruben stared at the paperwork in front of him but never reached for it.
A knock sounded at the door.
Before either of them could answer, the rest of the board filed in, Dena leading the pack with the firm’s senior partners close behind.
Dena looked from Ducane to Ruben, then to me.
Her eyes found the paperwork.
She smiled.
“You finally told him.”
Ruben let out a slow breath.
“Dena.”
She ignored him and walked around the table, stopping beside me.
“Good morning, Skye.”
I stood.
“Good morning.”
She squeezed my shoulder before taking her seat.
“Let’s get started,” Dena said.
“And why the fuck is she here? When she gave her shares, she gave up all this shit too. Always in your feelings. You got that soft shit from her.”
“Ruben, please kiss my ass. I built this law firm as it stands today with you, brick by brick. It was my family name ringing bells in the streets, not yours or your father’s.
You’ve spent this whole marriage thinking you chose me when the truth is my father begged me to take your hand.
Now let’s get this over with, I’ve got a date. ”
At Ducane’s nod, the firm’s general counsel, a tall, unbothered woman named Patricia, opened a folder of her own and began reading the resolution into the record.
Removal of Ruben Simmons as managing partner, effective immediately.
Formal names, formal language, none of it sounded like what it actually was, which was a son closing a door his father had spent thirty years standing in.
“All in favor,” Patricia said.
Hands went up around the table, one after another, senior partners who’d clearly known exactly what this meeting was before they ever walked in. Dena’s hand went up without hesitation.
Then it was my turn.
I felt every eye in that room shift to me at once. For a second, the version of myself who used to make herself small in rooms like this tried to surface. But I refused to let it.
I glanced down as my wedding ring caught the light.
I smiled.
I wasn’t that woman anymore.
I raised my hand.
Ruben didn’t look at the vote. He looked at me the entire time, praying that if he stared hard enough, he could make it not count, make me disappear back into whatever category he’d filed me under the first time he decided I wasn’t worth acknowledging.
I didn’t look away.
“Motion carries,” Patricia said, and just like that, it was done.
Ducane came and stood behind my chair, one hand on my shoulder, the other trailing warm along my neck.
Ruben’s jaw set, watching his son choose me and love me out loud. In that moment, I felt bad for him. He’d never know a love like this.
Finally, he stood, buttoned his jacket with hands that weren’t quite steady, and let his eyes move once, slowly, around a table full of people who were no longer looking at him like a king.
“Congratulations,” he said to no one and everyone. “You got everything you wanted, I guess.”
“No.” I finally spoke, surprising even myself with how even it came out.
“I just got what was already mine. There’s a difference.
I’ve always felt bad for you. Something is broken, and until you get that right, you will never ever have access to my family.
You can’t run me off this time. Enjoy the rest of your miserable little life. ”
“Ducane, this girl has warped your mind from day one. You thrived without her, and here you go, just giving her the chance to take us for everything we have. Be careful.”
“And Miss…”
“Mrs…”
He shook his head, “Congratulations on a successful infiltration and grift. Son, I was protecting you from this. She trapped you.”
“Man, get him the fuck outta here.”
“Bye bye, Ruben.”
Security arrived and he left without another word.
The second the door shut, my stomach turned over completely, no warning, no mercy, and I was up out of my chair and moving for the small bathroom off the conference room before I could say a single word about why.
I made it. Barely.
I heard the door open behind me a moment later, and then Ducane’s hand was gathering my hair back, his other palm flat and warm against my spine.