Chapter 4 - The Poisoned Gift
I sat on the edge of the plush hotel bed, staring at the audio waveforms playing across my laptop screen.
The voice coming through the speakers was crystal clear, recorded through the microphone embedded in the diamond clasp of the bracelet.
"Vincent thinks he’s running the board," Sophia’s voice purred through the recording, accompanied by the clinking of champagne glasses. "He transferred thirty percent of the voting shares into a temporary blind trust yesterday to shield them from his wife's divorce filing. He thinks I'm holding the proxy for him."
A man's low, gravelly chuckle answered her.
Marcus Vance.
"The boy is blinded by his own vanity," Vance said. "As soon as the market opens on Monday, we execute the proxy vote, remove him as CEO, and strip the Moretti patents. His wife’s divorce will finish him off in bankruptcy court."
My fingers hovered over the keyboard, cold sweat trickling down my spine.
Vincent had made an emergency transfer of shares that morning to prevent Arthur Harrison from freezing them during our divorce discovery.
In his frantic rush to hide his wealth from me, he had handed the controlling interest of his life's work directly to Vance’s shadow proxy.
"Claire, what are you listening to?" Madison asked, walking out of the bathroom with a glass of fresh orange juice.
I spun the screen toward her.
Madison listened to the recording for two minutes, her mouth falling open in utter disbelief.
"That absolute idiot," Madison gasped, pressing her hands to her cheeks. "He destroyed his family for a spy! What are you going to do?"
I looked down at the sonogram resting beside my laptop.
Three tiny heartbeats.
Three innocent lives who would carry the Moretti name into the world, whether their father deserved them or not.
If Moretti Enterprises collapsed into bankruptcy, the family trust would be liquidated by federal bankruptcy trustees.
The trust that was supposed to fund my children's healthcare, education, and security would be wiped out to pay off predatory corporate debt.
"I’m not saving Vincent," I said, closing the laptop with a decisive snap. "I'm protecting my children's inheritance."
"How?" Madison asked, her eyes wide. "He has thirty percent of the company locked up in Sophia’s proxy. You don't have standing to intervene in a corporate board meeting."
"Yes, I do," I replied, standing up and pulling my blazer over my shoulders.
When my father passed away, he hadn't left his shares to Vincent.
He had left a fifteen percent non-voting preferred stake directly to me, held in an independent trust managed exclusively by Arthur Harrison.
And according to the corporate charter my father had helped draft thirty years ago, preferred shares held emergency veto power over proxy transfers if fraud was proven before the board.
I grabbed my purse and dialed Arthur’s direct line.
"Uncle Arthur," I said the moment he picked up. "Call an emergency executive session of the Moretti Enterprises board for eight o'clock tomorrow morning."
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"Claire, Vincent won't agree to that," Arthur warned.
"He won't have a choice," I answered, watching the streetlights flicker across the Chicago skyline. "Tell the board that Mrs. Moretti is invoking the Founder's Clause."
