I let her finish her speech. I let her tell the room how I was “emotionally unfit,” how Dad had only kept me around out of pity, how the family name needed a “real leader.” Three board members shifted uncomfortably. Two others — the ones she’d been wining and dining for months — nodded along like trained seals.
Then I slid my own folder across the table.
“Before you sign anything, Viv,” I said softly, “you might want to read page four.”
She rolled her eyes and flipped it open. The color drained from her face one shade at a time.
Page four was the forensic audit. The one I’d commissioned the day she started calling Dad’s old lawyer behind my back. It showed every wire transfer she’d funneled from the European subsidiary into a shell company in her boyfriend’s name. Eight hundred and forty thousand dollars. Page five was the signed affidavit from that same boyfriend, who’d flipped the moment my investigator showed him the paper trail. Page six was the letter from the board’s independent counsel, dated yesterday, voting unanimously to remove her as a trustee of Dad’s estate.
“You can’t,” she whispered. “Dad’s will —”
“Dad’s will,” I said, “included a morality clause. You remember. You laughed at it during the reading. Said only losers got disqualified by fine print.”
The doors opened. Two officers from the corporate fraud unit stepped in, polite, almost apologetic. Vivienne stood up so fast her chair tipped backward. Her diamond bracelet rattled against the table like loose change.
“Daniel, please — I’m your sister.”
I finally looked her in the eye. “And I was your brother every Christmas you forgot to call. Every birthday Dad waited by the phone. Every board meeting you skipped while I worked eighty-hour weeks to keep his name alive.”
I stood, buttoned my plain gray jacket, and walked past her toward the window where the sun was just clearing the skyline.
“You wanted the company by Friday,” I said, without turning around. “You can have a cell by Monday instead.”
