Meredith looked at the grotesque words, the carefully phrased and damning half truths, the vicious accusations, and her entire body began to tremble. A voice screamed in her mind that she'd been a fool and a traitor to ever believe there was a shred of truth in the garbage pile of circumstantial evidence against her husband. The daze of helplessness and suspicion that had held her in a kind of stupor for the two days since she left Matt suddenly evaporated, and she saw everything with crystal clarity—her mistakes, the board's motives, her father's handiwork.

"Sign it, Meredith," Nolan Wilder said, shoving his pen at her.

Sign it.

Meredith made her choice, an irrevocable choice— perhaps even a choice that was already too late. Slowly she stood up. "Sign it?" she repeated contemptuously. "I'll do nothing of the sort!"

"We had hoped you'd appreciate this chance to exonerate yourself and to disassociate yourself from Farrell as well as to see the truth brought out and justice done," Wilder said icily.

"Is that what you're interested in?" Meredith demanded, leaning her palms on the table and glaring at all of them. "Truth and justice?" Several of the men glanced away as if they weren't entirely comfortable with the documents she'd been told to sign. "Then I'll tell you the truth!" she continued, her voice ringing with conviction. "Matthew Farrell had nothing to do with those bomb scares, and he had nothing to do with the murder of Stanislaus Spyzhalski, and he is not guilty of violating any SEC rules. The truth," she said with scathing disdain, "is that you're all terrified of him. In comparison to his triumphs, your successes in your own businesses are puny, and the thought of having him as a major shareholder of this company, or on this board, makes you feel insignificant! You're vain and you're terrified and, if you honestly believed I'd sign these papers because you've ordered me to do it, you're also fools!"

"I suggest you reconsider your decision very carefully right now, Meredith," another board member warned her, his face stiff with affront over what she'd said. "Either you are going to act in the best interests of Bancroft and Company, and sign those documents, which is your duty as acting interim president of this corporation—or we can only assume your loyalties lie with an enemy of this corporation."

"You're talking to me about my duty to Bancroft's and, at the same time, telling me to sign those papers?" she repeated, and suddenly she felt like laughing with the sheer joy of having taken her stand—the right stand. "You're dangerously incompetent if it hasn't occurred to you what Matthew Farrell will do to this company in retaliation for slandering and libeling him with that folder full of garbage. He'll own Bancroft's and all of you when he's finished suing you!" she finished almost proudly.

"We'll take that risk. Sign the papers."

"No!"

Unaware that the expressions of some of the board members were exhibiting definite signs of doubt about the wisdom of provoking Farrell, Nolan Wilder looked at her and said frigidly, "It appears that your misplaced loyalties are preventing you from fulfilling your responsibility as an officer of this corporation to act in its best interest. Either tender your resignation here and now, or prove me wrong and sign the papers."

Meredith looked him right in the eye. "Go to hell!"

"Good for you, girlie!" she heard old Cyrus shout in the taut, shocked silence as his fist hit the table. "I knew you had more than just great legs!" But Meredith scarcely heard him; she was turning her back on all of them, walking out of the boardroom, slamming the door behind her. Slamming it closed on a lifetime of cherished hopes and dreams.

Matt's words came back to her, cheering and forceful, as she walked swiftly toward her office. She'd asked him what he would do if his board pressured him unreasonably, and he'd replied, I'd tell them to fuck off The memory almost made her laugh. She hadn't quite said that to them, in fact she'd never said that to anyone, but what she had said amounted to the same thing, she decided proudly. Matt's party was tonight, and she was in a hurry to go home and change. The phone on her desk was ringing when she got back to her office, and since Phyllis had already left for the day, Meredith answered it automatically.

"Miss Bancroft," a cool, arrogant voice informed her, "this is William Pearson, Mr. Farrell's attorney. I've been trying to reach Stuart Whitmore all day, and since he hasn't yet returned my calls, I'm taking the liberty of calling you directly."

"That's fine," Meredith said, cradling the phone between her shoulder and ear as she opened her briefcase and began putting all her personal things from her desk into it. "Why are you calling?"

"Mr. Farrell has instructed us to tell you that he no longer has any desire to continue with the rest of the eleven-week trial period you agreed to. He has further instructed us to tell you," he continued in his nastiest, threatening tone, "that you are to file for divorce no later than six days from now, or else we will file in his behalf on the seventh day."

Meredith had already been subjected to all the coercion and threats she was willing to endure. Pearson's ominous, autocratic tone was the last straw! She took the phone away from her ear, glowered furiously at the receiver, then she spoke two crisp, emphatic words into Pearson's ear, and slammed the phone onto its cradle.

Not until she sat down to write out a hasty resignation did the full impact of Pearson's call truly hit her, and her feeling of triumph gave way to burgeoning panic at Matt's action. She'd already waited too long. He wanted a divorce. Immediately. No, that couldn't be true, she told herself desperately, writing faster. She signed her name to her resignation, and stood up, then she looked at what she had written. For the second time in moments she felt the terrible force of reality. Her father walked into her office right then, and it hit her yet again that she was severing herself from everything. Even him.

"Don't do this," he said, his voice harsh as she shoved the resignation toward him.

"You made me do it. You convinced them to draw up those documents, then you led me in there like a lamb to the slaughter. You forced me to choose."

"You chose him, not me, and not your heritage."

Meredith leaned her damp palms against the desk, her voice anguished. "There shouldn't have needed to be a choice. Daddy," she said, so distracted that she called him by the name she'd stopped using as a little girl, "why did you have to do this to me? Why did you have to tear me apart like this? Why couldn't I have loved you and him?"