Chapter 6 - The Monday Morning Coup
For the rest of Saturday night and all of Sunday, I did not shed a single tear inside my Myers Park library.
After reading my father's final letter—in which he wrote that he had caught Patricia and Evan falsifying municipal bond disclosures two days before his sudden fatal heart attack on the River District site—something cold and unbreakable forged itself inside my chest.
With Adrian Cole and his chief legal counsel working beside me around my dining room table for thirty-six straight hours, we did not prepare to defend a divorce; we prepared an execution.
At eight-fifty-five on Monday morning, I walked through the glass lobby of the Whitmore Development building in Uptown Charlotte wearing an ivory tailored silk power suit, my hair swept up, and not a piece of Evan's jewelry on my hands.
Wait by the elevator bank until I call you in, I told Adrian, who looked magnificent in a charcoal pinstripe three-piece suit as he touched my elbow lightly for luck.
When I pushed open the heavy glass doors of the twelfth-floor executive boardroom at nine o'clock sharp, Evan was already sitting at the head of the mahogany table with a triumphant smirk on his face.
To his left sat his mother Patricia and his father Harold, who together held fifteen percent of the company's voting stock.
To his right sat Megan Brooks in a modest pastel maternity dress she had bought to sell her lie to the board, holding a small pillow behind her back while two high-priced corporate divorce attorneys stacked blue folders in front of her.
And seated at the far end of the table were the three early minority angel investors—Arthur Jenkins, Helen Ross, and Martin Vance—who held the remaining twelve percent of the shares.
You are two minutes late, Claire, Evan said coldly, tapping his gold pen against a termination resolution on the blotter.
Since you chose to humiliate this family in front of Adrian Cole on Saturday night and then staged a doctored security video to harass Megan, my parents and I are exercising our combined fifty-six percent majority voting block this morning.
We are terminating your employment as Chief Operating Officer for cause effective immediately, Patricia announced, smiling like a cat that had cornered a canary.
And before you try to claim thirty-two percent of the company's valuation in divorce court, Evan's attorneys have prepared a mandatory buyback agreement paying you five hundred thousand dollars in twelve annual installments—because the four point five million dollars your late father put into this firm seven years ago was an unsecured family gift with no voting protection!
Sign the waiver on the table, Claire, and leave your building keycard with reception on your way out, Megan added softly, resting her hand on her flat stomach with a pitiful little sigh.
I did not sit down in the chair they had left for me by the door; instead, I walked calmly to the side credenza, poured myself a cup of black coffee, and looked around the table.
Before we vote on your fifty-six percent majority, Evan, you should probably ask Arthur, Helen, and Martin why they have their coats on, I said pleasantly.
Evan frowned as the three minority investors stood up from the far end of the table and buttoned their jackets.
We are leaving the room because we no longer own our twelve percent shares, Evan, Arthur Jenkins said flatly, refusing to shake Evan's hand.
At eight o'clock this morning, someone offered us three hundred percent over market value in cash for our combined twelve percent voting block, and we signed the stock transfer certificates twenty minutes ago.
At that exact moment, the glass boardroom doors swung open, and Adrian Cole walked into the room flanked by three senior partners from New York's most ruthless corporate law firm, laying the stamped twelve percent stock acquisition certificates onto the table.
What the hell are you doing in my boardroom, Cole?
Evan shot to his feet, his face mottled with panic and fury.
I am sitting down in the twelve percent shareholder seat I just bought, Whitmore—which means my twelve percent and Claire's thirty-two percent now stand at forty-four percent, Adrian replied smoothly, pulling out the leather chair beside mine.
Forty-four percent is still less than fifty-six percent, Cole!
Evan shouted, slamming both palms onto the mahogany table.
My forty-one percent and my parents' fifteen percent still control this boardroom, and there isn't a damn thing either of you can do to stop this vote!
Actually, Evan, you really should have read the original Promissory and Equity Security Agreement my father drafted when he put four point five million dollars into this company seven years ago, I said, sliding a certified parchment document bearing the seal of the North Carolina Secretary of State across the table into his hands.
Under Paragraph Nine—the Fiduciary Misappropriation Clawback Clause—if any officer of Whitmore Development transfers more than one million dollars out of the capital reserve using an unauthorized or forged signature, ten percent of the Whitmore family's voting stock automatically and irrevocably forfeits to the note holder upon bank certification of the forgery!
I dropped the certified affidavit from First Piedmont Bank's fraud division onto the table, showing that the four-point-five-million-dollar wire to Megan Brooks's account at eight-fifteen on Saturday night had been executed using a forged digital copy of my signature uploaded from Megan's computer—alongside the audio file from my front porch where Megan admitted on tape that she had faked her pregnancy with a five-hundred-dollar ultrasound to help steal the money!
As Megan's recorded voice echoed off the glass walls of the boardroom confessing that there was no baby at all, Evan spun around and stared at Megan as if she had just driven a knife into his chest, while Patricia let out a strangled shriek and grabbed her chest.
With that ten percent forfeiture, Adrian and I now hold fifty-four percent majority control of Whitmore Development, I announced to the stunned room, and as my first official act as Majority Chairwoman, Evan Whitmore and Megan Brooks are terminated for felony embezzlement and evicted from this building immediately!
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Before security could escort a screaming Evan and a pale, trembling Megan out the door, the red emergency speakerphone in the center of the boardroom table began flashing violently with a priority call from the President of Piedmont Commercial Bank.
I pressed the speaker button, expecting confirmation that the stolen four point five million dollars had been returned to our operating account—and instead, the bank president's frantic voice filled the room: Claire, thank God you are in the boardroom, Federal Reserve examiners just arrived on our floor because thirty minutes ago someone used your Chief Operating Officer biometric credentials and a Cayman Islands routing key to draw down a thirty-five-million-dollar emergency bridge loan against every single property Whitmore Development owns, and the entire thirty-five million just vanished offshore!
