Chapter 213 The Board Wants My Head
"The blue piece goes on the tail," Elias stated. He pointed a sticky finger at the instruction booklet.
"The blue piece goes on the wing, buddy," Tristan corrected. His voice held infinite patience. The Colombian jungle and the gunfire from two days ago felt like a lifetime away. Here, on the rug, he was just a father.
"No," Elias insisted. "The tail."
Tristan let out a long breath. He looked up at me. His gray eyes crinkled at the corners. "Tell your son the engineers know best."
"My son is right," I said. I offered a small smile. "Put the blue piece on the tail."
Tristan surrendered. He snapped the blue plastic onto the tail of the plane. Elias beamed.
The peace in the room felt fragile, like thin glass waiting for a hammer. We survived the hit squads. We survived the eastern sector war. We brought Alexander home. But the corporate war raged outside our windows, louder and more vicious than before.
My phone vibrated on the glass coffee table. The screen displayed Ricardo's name.
I set my mug down. I picked up the phone and accepted the call.
"The board is in full panic," Ricardo announced. He skipped the greeting. The exhaustion in his tone matched the bags under his eyes the last time I saw him. "Julian did not stop with your resignation. He launched a massive media blitz this morning."
"What is the narrative?" I asked.
"He is painting your surrender as an admission of guilt," Ricardo explained. "He hired three separate PR firms. They are flooding the networks with allegations of embezzlement. He claims you used the Serrano Trust as a personal slush fund."
"He is lying," Tristan growled. He abandoned the toy. The titan woke up. He stood and walked toward the sofa.
"The truth does not matter to the market," Ricardo countered. "The stock is hemorrhaging. The institutional investors are terrified. Julian is stoking the fire. He called an emergency shareholder meeting for Friday."
"He already has the Chairman seat," I noted. I kept my voice flat. "What does he want from the shareholders?"
"A vote of no confidence," Ricardo said. The words hung heavy over the line. "He wants to expel you from the board. He wants the shareholders to vote to strip you of your remaining shares and freeze your personal assets. He wants to bankrupt you, Mina."
Tristan reached down and took the phone from my hand. He put it on speaker.
"If Julian calls that vote, I will tie him up in litigation for a decade," Tristan swore. "I will drown his lawyers in paperwork."
"You cannot fight a shareholder majority," Ricardo warned. "If they vote no confidence, the SEC steps in. They freeze everything. The penthouses. The bank accounts. The trust funds. Julian is using the media war to terrify the board into giving him absolute authority."
"Let him," I said.
Tristan looked at me. His jaw tightened. "Mina, if they freeze the accounts, we lose our leverage. You handed him the company. You cannot hand him the knife."
"Julian thinks he holds the knife," I replied. I looked at the phone. "Ricardo, do not fight the media blitz. Issue a statement saying I welcome the shareholder vote. Tell them I will attend the meeting on Friday."
"Are you out of your mind?" Ricardo demanded. "Walking into that meeting is corporate suicide."
"Do it," I ordered.
I ended the call. The silence rushed back into the room.
Elias picked up his finished airplane. He ran the toy through the air, making a soft swooshing sound. He remained oblivious to the collapse of his mother's empire.
Tristan sat next to me on the sofa. The leather groaned under his weight. He rested his elbows on his knees. He ran a hand through his dark hair.
"You built a trap," Tristan said. He turned his head to look at me. "You stepped down to put him in the open. But a trap needs a mechanism to snap shut. What is your mechanism?"
"Julian is using Thomas Whitmore's money," I explained. I shifted my body toward him. "Thomas hid those funds in offshore accounts to avoid federal seizure. Julian used that illegal money to fund the eastern sector syndicate. He paid for the strike team at the school. He paid for the mercenaries in Colombia."
"We know that," Tristan agreed. "But proving it requires a paper trail. Oliver Pembroke is dead. The syndicate is ash. The Vanguard fleet is at the bottom of the harbor. You burned the evidence."
"I burned the weapons," I corrected. "I did not burn the ledger. Someone had to process the transfers from Thomas's ghost accounts to the syndicate. Julian is arrogant, but he is not a banker. He used a proxy to move the money before he stepped into the light."
"Who?"