Dominic’s head snapped toward his mother. “You evicted her?”
“She refused to sign the corporate waiver forms!” Victoria hissed, her aristocratic mask finally cracking. “She was going to block the Crestwood merger with her personal holding claims! I did what was necessary to protect the legacy of this family!”
“The legacy of this family is currently sitting in a folder on page eighty-seven of the corporate charter,” I countered, my tone completely devoid of heat. “The clause my father insisted upon when he underwrote your primary expansion line ten years ago. It explicitly states that if any executive officer engages in systematic fraud, identity coercion, or the deliberate concealment of direct heirs from the trust infrastructure, the controlling shares automatically revert to the primary underwriter’s estate.”
I looked directly into Victoria’s pale face. “My estate.”
The silence that followed was absolute. Arthur Vance, Dominic’s father and the retired chairman of the board, stepped out of the shadow of the adjoining executive office. He was seventy years old, tall, silver-haired, and carried the quiet, terrifying stillness of a man who had spent forty years erasing his opponents from the market.
