Chapter 4 - The Emergency Board
By nine the next morning, Voss Global’s boardroom was full.
Elena entered without an entourage.
She wore a simple black suit.
No jewelry except her father’s watch.
The room fell silent anyway.
Twelve directors watched her cross the floor.
Some had known exactly who she was for years.
Others had only learned the truth the previous night.
One man did not stand.
Elias Grant.
Seventy-one.
Silver-haired.
Elegant.
Chairman of the board.
He had been one of Elena’s father’s closest friends.
“Elena.”
“Elias.”
“I wish you had given us warning.”
“About Damian?”
“About all of this.”
Elena sat.
“If a principal shareholder needs permission to stop theft from her own company, we have a larger problem than Damian.”
Several directors looked down.
Elias smiled faintly.
“You always did sound like your father.”
Jonathan placed the audit report on the table.
“We have identified seventeen million dollars in suspicious transfers.”
Murmurs spread around the room.
Elias opened the report.
“Suspicious doesn’t mean criminal.”
“No,” Elena said.
“But concealed usually means someone didn’t want us looking.”
Elias closed the folder.
“You liquidated Damian’s holdings without board consultation.”
“I activated contractual protections he signed himself.”
“You humiliated him.”
Elena’s expression didn’t change.
“He humiliated himself.”
Elias leaned back.
“There will be consequences.”
“For him?”
“For all of us.”
The doors opened.
A lawyer entered carrying a sealed envelope.
He handed it to Elias.
Elena watched the chairman read.
Then smile.
“What is it?”
Elias slid the document across the table.
A petition had been filed in New York Supreme Court.
Damian Cross was seeking an emergency injunction.
He alleged that Elena had manipulated corporate structures during their marriage, hidden marital assets, and unlawfully seized companies he helped build.
Jonathan muttered something under his breath.
Elena read every page.
Then she reached the final paragraph.
Damian was demanding discovery into the ownership history of Voss Global Holdings.
Not just the last seven years.
Twenty-five years.
Elena looked up.
Elias watched her carefully.
“That could become uncomfortable.”
“For whom?”
“For anyone with something buried in the past.”
Elena folded the petition.
Her father had created Voss Global twenty-four years earlier.
Damian could not know enough to ask about that period.
Unless someone had told him where to look.
Her gaze shifted slowly toward Elias.
May you like
The chairman smiled.
And for the first time since Damian’s downfall began, Elena wondered whether she had removed the wrong man first.
