Chapter 1
The gavel came down before I could reach the boardroom door.
For a moment, I heard nothing else. I watched my stepfather lean over the table and put his name on the sale agreement for the company my father had built.
Then Richard Vale looked up and saw me.
His smile widened.
“Well,” he said. “You made it in time to watch.”
I stood in the hallway with my father’s leather briefcase pressed against my ribs. Its handle had split years ago, and I had wrapped it with black tape. Richard used to make jokes about that every time I brought it to work.
Today, I held on so tightly my fingers hurt.
“You can’t sell the company without me,” I said.
Richard capped his gold pen.
“I just did.”
Beyond him, the directors sat around the long table. I had known some of them since I was a child. Mr. Han had once let me sit in his office chair while Dad showed him the first machine they had designed together.
Now Mr. Han stared at his hands.
Richard stood and buttoned his jacket. “Your father left a business. I kept it alive.”
“My father left it to me.”
“Your father left you a dream you weren’t capable of running.”
The words landed in an old wound. Richard had been saying some version of them since the year my mother married him.
I was sixteen when Dad died. Richard arrived two years later, bringing expensive flowers and a soft voice into a house that had forgotten how to laugh. At first, he asked about my classes. Then he asked about Dad’s accounts. After the wedding, the questions stopped sounding like questions.
He took my office.
Then my seat at meetings.
Then he started telling people I was too unstable to make decisions.
I was twenty-six now. I had spent the last six months trying to find out why the company’s bills were growing while orders kept coming in. Every time I got close, Richard took away another password.
This morning, he had locked me out of the building.
I lifted the briefcase. “I found Dad’s original records.”
Richard’s gaze flicked toward it. For the first time, his smile tightened.
“What you found is irrelevant,” he said.
A woman in a navy suit stepped into the hall behind me. She had introduced herself as the auction administrator when I arrived. She had refused to let me into the room.
“The transaction is complete,” she said quietly.
Richard pointed at me. “Get him out.”
Two security guards came forward. One took my left arm. The other reached for the briefcase.
“Don’t touch that.”
I pulled it back, but the first guard tightened his grip.
Through the open door, I saw my mother standing beside the windows. She wore the pearl earrings Dad had given her for their twentieth anniversary.
“Mom,” I said.
She looked at me.
For one second, I thought she would come over.
Instead, she turned toward Richard. “You said he could stay for the auction.”
“I changed my mind,” Richard said.
The guard pulled me toward the glass entrance. My shoe caught on the edge of the carpet, and I nearly fell.
Behind me, Richard gave a small laugh.
That was when the first black SUV stopped outside.
Three more pulled in behind it.
The guards paused. A driver opened the door of the front vehicle, and an older man stepped out in a gray suit. Two people followed him carrying document cases.
I knew his face from the business pages.
Arthur Sterling.
Richard knew it too. His gold pen slipped from his hand and struck the floor.
“Mr. Sterling?” he said.
Arthur walked through the doors without looking at Richard. His eyes moved from the guard’s hand on my arm to the briefcase in mine.
“Let him go,” he said.
The guard obeyed.
I had met Arthur only once, when I was nine. Dad had taken me to a factory opening, and Arthur had shaken my hand as seriously as if I were one of his partners.
I doubted he remembered it.
He stopped beside me and laid a hand on my shoulder.
“Ethan,” he said. “Are you all right?”
“I’m still here.”
“That’s enough for now.”
Richard hurried into the hallway. “Arthur, I can explain. This sale was properly authorized.”
Arthur’s hand remained on my shoulder.
“Then you’ll welcome a review.”
The auction administrator stepped forward. “Mr. Sterling, our firm accepted the winning bid. We have executed documents.”
“I know,” Arthur said. “The winning bidder works for me.”
Richard stared at him.
Arthur looked toward the boardroom. “Nobody releases the sale proceeds. Nobody transfers a share. Your counsel has already received the preservation notice.”
Richard’s face drained.
“You had no right to interfere.”
“I had every right to bid.”
Arthur turned to me. His voice dropped low enough that only I could hear.
“Did you bring what your father left you?”
I looked at the worn briefcase.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Richard took a step closer. “Whatever he has, it doesn’t change the agreement.”
May you like
Arthur faced him at last.
“Did you really think we would let you steal his empire?”
