Chapter 3 - Six Minutes at the Conference Center
The conference center's glass doors were still dark when Miriam and I appeared on a video link at 5:58 a.m.
I was seated upright in my hospital bed.
My cast was visible.
My attorney had insisted on that.
The board members filed into view one by one.
My father sat at the head of the table in a navy suit.
Victor stood behind him.
Dylan stared at his phone with the same bored expression he'd worn while my arm broke onstage.
Linda's chair remained empty.
Her criminal attorney had advised her not to attend.
“Leah,” my father said, as though we were holding an ordinary family breakfast.
“You look tired.”
“I'm here to object to the vote.”
“Please don't embarrass yourself.”
Miriam interrupted.
“Before any vote, I am placing the board on notice that Ms. Mercer disputes the asserted proxy and has submitted an emergency application for relief.”
Victor smiled.
“An application isn't an injunction.”
“Correct,” Miriam said.
“Which is why I'd be very careful about what you do next.”
The chairman of the audit committee, a woman named Celia Grant, finally spoke.
“Mr. Mercer, is your daughter's participation being recorded?”
“Of course,” my father replied.
“Then please record her objection in the minutes.”
He looked annoyed.
That simple request had interrupted the performance he'd rehearsed.
Victor presented a doctor's preliminary assessment describing me as emotionally dysregulated and incapable of managing complex financial decisions.
Miriam asked when the doctor last evaluated me in person.
Victor said the answer was privileged.
“Then the board should know he hasn't examined my client since she was sixteen,” Miriam replied.
A murmur moved through the conference room.
Dylan finally looked up.
“She's proving the point,” he muttered.
“Look how aggressive she is.”
I kept both feet on the floor.
There had been nights overseas when remaining calm was the only way to keep a patient alive.
My brother was not going to make me lose that skill.
“Dylan,” I said, “did you approve the quality exceptions for supplier lot 8C-114?”
Every face on the screen changed.
He looked at Victor.
Victor cut in.
“That's not on the agenda.”
“Then why does the emergency agenda authorize destruction of archived supplier samples?”
Celia leaned forward.
“What samples?”
My father slammed a hand on the table.
“This meeting is about fiduciary stability.”
“Then preserving evidence should be easy,” Miriam said.
The meeting stopped for six minutes while the directors argued about whether a protective motion could be added.
Those six minutes mattered.
At 6:14, Miriam's second phone rang.
A judge had granted a short-term restraining order preserving the disputed voting status and preventing destruction or transfer of specified trust records pending a prompt hearing.
It did not give me the company.
It did not decide whether my signatures were forged.
But it stopped the board from changing the ownership record that morning.
Miriam read the order into the camera.
Celia demanded the session be recessed.
My father stared straight at me.
“You have no idea what you've just done.”
“Neither did Mom,” I said, “when she trusted you.”
He flinched.
For the first time, I saw fear beneath his anger.
Then Victor bent down and whispered something in his ear.
My father nodded.
May you like
Before the screen went black, I heard him say, “Move the servers.”
