The Whole Valley Called Her the Plain Fiancee, So She Let the Banquet Read the Deed novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: Face Down

Rhys's POV

I found the board packet on a Tuesday, five weeks before the banquet.

It was in the leather folder my mother kept in the second drawer of her desk.

The drawer was not locked that day.

She had gone to a hair appointment, and her assistant had set a lunch tray on the desk and left the drawer a quarter inch open.

I was looking for a pen.

The first page was a term sheet, eleven lines on gray letterhead from a firm in Denver.

I read the first line twice.

"Proposed acquisition of one hundred percent of the Wheelwright Group, including all vineyard holdings, the barrel facility, the hospitality properties and associated water rights."

My mother was selling the company.

She had been selling it for eight months.

I turned the page, and there were tabs.

One was marked Layoffs, with a number on it: one hundred and forty.

One was marked Cellar, with a note beside it that said "close at transfer."

One was marked Water.

I turned to the Water tab and read it standing up.

It said the Touchet right could not transfer without the signature of its holder, whom the board's counsel had named as Anders Aldahl.

It said the cleanest path was a family transfer.

It said a family transfer needed a marriage.

I sat down in my mother's chair with the packet open on my knees.

I understood why she had come home from the Aldahl farm that spring looking so pleased.

There was a daughter, and nobody had told me her name.

I photographed every page with my phone, and I printed them at home that night.

Then I put the packet back exactly as I had found it, and the drawer a quarter inch open.

I was thirty-four years old and the chief executive of the company my grandfather built.

I could not say one word to my mother without my throat closing.

That has been true since I was eight.

It was true that night in my study, when I stood at the window and decided what to do.

I could not fight her.

She had the board.

She had my father's proxy, which she had held since his stroke and which I had never asked her to return.

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