My Sister Stole My Wedding, So I Took Her Husband's Company novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Maxwell's Terms

Maxwell lays out the votes, the missing nine million and his one rule; Hazel admits she signed the report he invested on, and he stops writing.

Maxwell Brodie rang my grandmother's doorbell at eleven on Sunday morning with a leather briefcase and a box of lemon bars.

Winifred opened the door, looked at the box, and let him in.

"Who told you where I live?" she said.

"The guest list had a Winifred Heathcote in Stamford," he said. "There aren't many."

"Good," she said. "Sit."

He sat at the kitchen table where I had read the proxy page the day before.

I was still wearing my grandfather's Yankees shirt. I hadn't slept, and I hadn't been able to take off the ring.

I'd been twisting it since the chapel.

"Mr. Brodie," I said. "Say what you came to say."

"Maxwell." He opened the briefcase. "Here's what I came to say."

He laid out three sheets of paper in a row.

The first one was the company's ownership. Preston forty-five percent. Me, thirty. Maxwell's fund, twenty-five.

"Any fifty-one controls Lyle Group," he said. "Preston has forty-five and no friends on the board who matter. You have thirty and a grudge."

"I don't have a grudge," I said.

"You walked out of your own wedding, Ms. Heathcote."

Winifred set down a mug in front of him with a small, satisfied click.

"I have twenty-five," he went on. "Together, fifty-five. I can call a special meeting of the shareholders and any holder of twenty percent has the right to call one. It takes twenty-one days. We vote Preston out as chief executive, and we vote you in."

"Me," I said.

"You know where every dollar in that building goes. He doesn't."

"I'm not a CEO."

"You were running it for four years. He only signed it."

I looked at the second sheet.

It was a ledger of transfers, six of them, between April and September. Each said bridge financing and a figure. The last line was a total.

Nine point two million dollars.

"Where did it go?" I said.

"That's the question I came to ask you."

"I didn't know about these."

He looked at me for a long time.

"I believe you," he said. "I'm not sure why yet."

I turned the ring on my finger again. It stuck at the knuckle and scraped.

"Stop that," Maxwell said.

"It's mine."

"It's cutting you."

I looked down. The skin had gone red under the band, and a thin line of blood showed at the edge.

"Give me your hand," he said.

I thought of every reason not to.

I gave it to him anyway.

He held my wrist in one hand and worked the ring over the knuckle with his thumb, slow and careful, until it came free.

His hands were warm and dry. He let go of me before I was ready.

He set the ring on the table in front of Winifred.

She picked it up, looked at it, and dropped it in the drawer where she kept rubber bands and dead batteries.

"There," she said. "Now he's not in the room."

"Thank you," I said, and I meant it, and I was annoyed that I meant it.

"Terms," Maxwell said. He folded his hands. "You run the company. I vote with you. That's all this is. Nothing else."

"Nothing else," I said.

"I'm not here to be your friend, and I'm not here to be anything you'd regret on a bad Tuesday."

"I wasn't asking."

"Good."

He said it flatly, and I felt the heat go up my neck, and I looked at the third sheet so he wouldn't see.

The third sheet was a copy of the Q2 report, the one filed in May.

At the bottom was the line for the finance director's signature.

My name was in blue ink above it.

"This one," Maxwell said. "The bridge financing is described on page nine. My fund put in five million after reading it."

"I signed that," I said.

The room got quiet.

"I signed every quarter's report for four years," I said. "Preston said the bridge loan was documented and the lender was a family friend. I didn't see the loan papers."

"You didn't ask for them?"

"I asked, and he said Monday. He always said Monday."

Maxwell didn't write anything down.

He had been writing the whole time, in a small black notebook. Now the pen sat still on the page.

"Maxwell," I said.

"Tomorrow," he said. "Nine o'clock. I'll meet you at the building."

He closed the briefcase and stood.

He left the lemon bars on the table, and he didn't look at me again before the door shut.

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