My Four Adopted Sons Betrayed My Daughter novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Forty Executives

The sons demand her company in the boardroom and Marisa suspends all four on the spot, then forty division heads resign at the same minute.

Alessia made me leave the hospital at eight the next morning.

"Go take it back," she said from the pillow, her lip swollen around the stitches. "I'll be fine. There's a police officer outside the door and the nurse already likes me."

I kissed her forehead and went.

On the thirty-first floor of the Cardwell Group tower, the boardroom doors stood open.

Forty executives sat around the long table and along the walls.

They were the heads of the divisions, the department chiefs, and the people who signed my payroll.

My four sons sat at the head of the table, in my chair and the three beside it.

Sasha Wetherby sat to Jared's left in her school blazer.

Nobody had told me about this meeting.

"Mom," Jared said, and he did not stand. "We called a family session. Please sit."

"I'll stand."

My second son slid a folder down the table.

He ran Cardwell Finance, and he had never in his life looked me in the eye while he asked for money.

"It's a proposal for stability," he said. "The trust and the voting shares move to the four of us as co-guardians, just while you recover."

"Recover from what?"

"From what happened Thursday," my third son said. "You were hysterical in that hallway, and a lot of people saw it."

"We're thinking of you," Jared said. "And of the company."

He turned to the room.

"Thirty-eight of you signed the letter that supports this. I'm grateful."

Several people stared at the table.

A woman from the legal department looked at me and then away.

"Who signed it?" I asked.

Nobody answered.

"Raise your hand if you signed a letter this man handed you."

Eleven hands went up, slowly.

Then more of them did, around the room, and they looked at each other as they did it.

I looked at Jared.

"You've been collecting names since the summer," I said.

"People want a leader who isn't hiding in a house with a sick kid."

"My daughter is not sick, Jared. She was kicked until her rib broke."

"That is not what the school says."

"The school's footage says otherwise."

I let that sit.

His face did not change, and I saw that it was meant not to.

"Now," I said. "Here is the stability proposal."

I turned to the head of security, who had been standing in the doorway since I arrived.

"Please collect each of their badges."

"Mom," Jared said.

"And their keys to the building, and their parking passes."

"You can't do that."

"I can, because I own every share of this company," I said. "I always have."

Nobody in the room spoke.

"The succession plan you all keep talking about was never a document," I said. "It was a hope I let you have because I loved you. A hope doesn't vote."

My second son went gray.

"The trust is mine. The voting shares are mine. Your divisions are mine, and as of this morning all four of you are suspended."

"On what grounds?" my third son said. "I'm the general counsel."

"On the grounds that you stood outside a bathroom door while my daughter was beaten."

The head of security stepped forward and held out his hand.

My second son put down his badge first.

Then my third son did.

Eli slid his across the table, shaking, and kept his eyes on the wood.

Jared did not move.

"Jared," the security chief said quietly.

Jared took his badge off his lapel and dropped it on the table.

"You're making a mistake," he said.

"No."

"Forty people just watched you throw out the only people who know how to run this place."

"Then forty people can decide what they think of it," I said.

I looked at Sasha.

"This is a boardroom, and you are a high school student. Please wait outside."

"Mrs. Cardwell," she said, and her eyes filled in the way they had in the hospital.

"Out."

Jared put a hand on her shoulder.

"She's our guest."

"She was a guest in my house," I said. "Now she's a guest of the security desk."

Two guards walked her out between them.

At the door she glanced back at me, and for the length of one breath her eyes were completely dry.

She looked at me with no feeling in her face at all.

Then the tears came back and she was gone.

Jared was the last of the four to the door.

He stopped beside me and spoke low enough that only I heard it.

"You think they're loyal to you," he said. "Go and see who still answers to you."

"I will," I said.

He went out, and my sons went after him.

I spent the day in that room with the executives who had stayed, learning what Jared had promised them.

A bonus pool.

A seat for each of them in the new structure.

Not one of them had asked what it would cost.

At six that evening I was sitting alone at the end of the table.

My phone buzzed.

It buzzed again.

Then it did not stop.

I turned it over.

Forty emails sat in my inbox, every one with the same subject line.

The same minute on every timestamp.

Resignation.

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