The Dragon Mother Returns: Taking Back Everything That Belongs to My Daughter novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: Taking Back

Nobody in the boardroom moved.

The cameras at the back clicked.

Lionel recovered first. He always did.

"Clara," he said kindly. "Put that down. You're upset."

"I'm holding it," Clara said. "That's how it works. Isn't it? Whoever holds it."

"With the last signed transfer." He tapped the folder in front of him. "Which is mine."

Clara walked along the table to him.

She reached past his hand, took the notarized page out of his folder and held it up beside the card.

"This one?"

"Sweetheart."

"I signed this," Clara told the room, "because of a letter my mother never wrote."

She looked at Paisley at the podium.

"My stepsister wrote it. She practiced my mother's handwriting on the backs of old birthday cards. I have the practice pages. I gave them to the family lawyer at eight this morning."

Paisley's hand went to the brooch.

Clara tore the page in half.

Then in half again, and again, until it was the size of confetti, and let it fall on the walnut in front of Lionel.

"My mother is Marguerite Oberlin," she said. "She's sitting in the front row next to the woman who raised me half the time. I'm voting the trust. With my own name."

She turned to the vice chair.

"The trust votes against the sale of the shipping line. All fifty-one percent."

The vice chair swallowed. "So noted."

"And I'd like the chair to speak."

"Miss Oberlin, legally the chair is..."

"I know what she is legally," Clara said. "I'm asking."

I stood up.

I walked to the screen and handed the family lawyer a small drive.

The doctor's letter disappeared.

The vault log came up instead, line after line, in the bank's plain gray type.

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