Page 17 of The Mafia Husband's Loveless Marriage

The conference room was on the top floor of a building downtown, all floor-to-ceiling windows and a long mahogany table surrounded by leather chairs. The kind of room where important people made important decisions, and Maika was fairly certain she was the first person to ever walk into it carrying a highlighter pen she'd accidentally brought from her Shakespeare seminar.

She slipped the pen into her pocket before anyone noticed. At least she hoped nobody noticed.

"All you have to do is listen," Mykos murmured as he pulled out her chair for her. "I'll do all the talking for now, but next time it will be your turn."

She nodded eagerly, wanting to be of help to Mykos. But that desire faded when the board meeting officially commenced, and she noticed how the air in the room had changed into something...unfriendly. The smiles became stiffer. The postures shifted. It almost tasted like envy and resentment, underscored by fear. They seemed to fear her husband, but at the same time, they also seemed to want to be him. But because they couldn't, they wanted to destroy—

No, stop that, Maika!

Give them a chance.

You may just be reading them wrong.

"I mean no disrespect, Ravensworth," the member seated across from them said. He was an older man with silver hair and a signet ring that he kept turning on his finger, and his tone was the kind of pleasant that wasn't actually pleasant at all. "But many people still remember who your father was."

Yup, still reading them wrong.

Mykos inclined his head. "No offense was taken."

It should have ended there, but then...

"That's true, Joe. I still remember the news reports when his father was still alive."

This came from a woman three seats down, and the way she said it—leaning back in her chair, arms crossed, like she was discussing something mildly distasteful—made Maika's fingers curl under the table.

Maika struggled to keep her smile in place as everyone at the table started talking. Most of them had been silent earlier. Butnow that it was time to talk smack about someone who was already dead, they all wanted to be heard?

She stole a glance at her husband. He sat perfectly still beside her, his expression unchanged, his hands resting on the table. He looked like a man who had heard all of this before and had long since stopped expecting anything different.

And somehow, that was worse than if he had looked angry.

While she and Mykos had never had a chance yet to talk about his father, Orion had shared with her just a bit about Diogenes, and she had done her own research as well. She knew that Mykos's father was no angel. Hewasa criminal.

But when she heard another member say, "We're setting a really good example, having Mykos with us..."

Don't do it, Maika.

He told you to just listen.

So don't...don't...no, I can't, I have to!

And that was when Maika heard herself say brightly, "Yes, exactly."

All eyes swung in her direction, with most of them even looking rather affronted that a girl in her late teens would dare to address people who were twice her age and gazillion times wealthier.

The man with the signet ring raised an eyebrow. The woman who'd been leaning back in her chair sat up.

Maika's heart was hammering so hard she was sure everyone could hear it, but the words were already coming, and she couldn't have stopped them even if she'd wanted to.

"Most people would simply judge my husband because of his father's misdeeds and be unable to see past all the violence, and they would forget he had no choice about the childhood he had been given. Most people would make him pay for his father's sins.But..."

And strangely enough...

This was when Maika actually found herself praying for her heart, rather than theirs, as she looked at the other board members and said earnestly, "You all accepted him despite everything. You saw him for who he was, and I'm just so, so thankful for that."

The sudden silence that followed her words had Maika slowly paling. Oh no. Had she said something crazy? Mykos was right. She really shouldn't have spoken at all and just listened—

Huh?