Chapter 6 - Thirty-Four Percent
The board meeting began at eight on a Thursday.
I arrived at seven forty-five carrying one notebook.
For years, I had entered Vextor’s conference room with three folders, two backup plans, and the quiet expectation that I would solve whatever Christopher had failed to prepare.
This time, I took a seat and let the independent chair run the meeting.
Her name was Marianne Holt.
She had invested in Vextor because she believed the company’s industrial monitoring technology had a future.
She had not invested in the Lawson family’s private mythology.
“Today’s purpose,” she said, “is to address the review of related-party transactions and the company’s response.”
Christopher sat opposite me.
He looked exhausted.
Adrian joined remotely with counsel.
Michelle’s attorney had provided records separately.
Nobody mentioned the twins.
That was the first useful thing about the meeting.
Priya presented her findings with the patience of someone describing a bridge that had been built without enough bolts.
Payments without adequate support.
Conflicts that had not been disclosed.
Duplicated expense claims.
Communications suggesting that certain reports were assembled after invoices had already been paid.
Christopher interrupted twice.
Marianne stopped him twice.
“You will have an opportunity to respond.”
When that opportunity came, he blamed Adrian.
He said he had trusted his brother’s expertise.
Then he blamed the finance staff.
Then he said I had been involved in Vextor’s finances for years and should have noticed.
The room went silent.
I opened my notebook.
“Which of these payments did I approve?”
He looked away.
“Victoria—”
“Which ones?”
Priya answered before he could.
“The transactions under review were approved outside the scope of Ms. Bennett’s consulting assignment, and several were routed after her access was reduced.”
Bennett.
My original name.
Hearing it in that room steadied me.
Christopher had reduced my access nine months earlier, claiming investors wanted “cleaner operational boundaries.”
At the time, I thought he was distancing himself because of the affair.
Now the decision had another possible meaning.
Adrian’s attorney objected to conclusions being drawn before the review was complete.
Marianne agreed that the investigation would continue.
Then the board considered interim measures.
Christopher would be placed on administrative leave from his executive role.
An experienced operating officer would serve as interim chief executive.
Payments to the disputed vendors would remain suspended.
Outside counsel would evaluate recovery options and any obligations to notify authorities.
The votes did not belong to me alone.
That was why I trusted the outcome.
Afterward, Christopher followed me into the corridor.
“You enjoyed that.”
“No.”
“You’ve been waiting to take my company.”
I stopped beside a window overlooking the employee courtyard.
Below, two engineers were eating breakfast from paper containers.
A maintenance worker was watering a row of struggling plants.
“You keep calling it your company,” I said. “There are eighty-three people working here. There are investors, customers, and suppliers who relied on your decisions.”
“I built this.”
“And other people helped. You don’t become smaller by admitting that.”
He looked as though I had slapped him.
Then his expression collapsed into something more familiar.
“Michelle lied to me.”
“Yes.”
“Does that mean nothing to you?”
“It means you were betrayed. It doesn’t erase what you did before you found out.”
He leaned against the wall.
For a moment, he looked older than his forty-two years.
“I don’t know who I am anymore.”
Once, that sentence would have become my emergency.
I would have canceled my day, taken him home, and built a plan around making him feel whole.
Instead, I closed my notebook.
“Then find someone qualified to help you work that out.”
I walked away before sympathy could become another contract I had never agreed to sign.
In the elevator, my hands started shaking.
By the time I reached the parking garage, I was crying.
Marianne found me beside my car.
She did not pretend not to notice.
“Do you need a minute?”
“Yes.”
She stood nearby until I could breathe normally.
Then she said, “We’ll need your input on the restructuring. Paid engagement. Defined scope. No midnight rescues.”
I wiped my face.
“That sounds unusually reasonable.”
“We’re experimenting.”
For the first time, Vextor offered me work without asking me to disappear inside it.
May you like
I told her I would review the proposal.
Then I drove home, ordered lunch, and ate it sitting down.
