Chapter 38 The Brothers' Move
David's POV
I did not answer Brittany's unspoken question at the dinner table.
I looked at her looking at me, her mouth open and whatever she had been about to say suspended between us, and I saw the moment something shifted in her eyes, something large and private moving through her expression that she immediately began to manage. I recognized the management because I did it constantly myself.
I picked up my water glass and said, "You don't have to explain anything tonight."
It was what she had said to me in her bedroom after the East Wing, the night I had run to her room because the camera feed went dark. I had not forgotten it. I used her own words deliberately and watched her recognize them, watched something in her face soften by one degree before the managing closed back over it.
She looked down at her plate.
We finished dinner, talking about the collection's timeline, practical and forward-facing, and I did not push her on anything she wasn't ready to say, because I understood better than most people that the most important things required their own timing and could not be rushed without being damaged.
The family meeting notification arrived the following morning.
A formal written request, printed on estate letterhead, delivered to my office by one of Richard's staff rather than my own, which was itself a statement. The request was for a full family meeting, all six Blackwell brothers, the formal dining room, ten o'clock that morning.
I read it twice. Set it down. Sent a reply confirming attendance.
Then I went to the surveillance room and spent forty minutes reviewing everything I had prepared over the past three weeks, making sure each component was in place, each document was filed correctly, and each piece of the counter-strategy was positioned where I could reach it when I needed it.
At ten o'clock, I walked into the formal dining room.
They were all there. Richard at the far end, Thomas to his right, the other three, Charles, William, and Edward, arranged along the sides. Five brothers in a room, dressed in their best, presenting a unified front with the practiced confidence of men who believed the meeting was already decided in their favor.
I sat at the head of the table.
I looked at each face in turn and took four minutes to understand the full picture. Richard studied calmly. Thomas's barely contained satisfaction. Charles is watching Thomas for cues. William and Edward are present but peripheral, followers rather than architects.
Thomas had planned this. Richard was executing it. The others were along for the inheritance.
"Thank you for coming," Richard said, as if he had done me a courtesy by summoning me to my own dining room.
I said nothing. I waited.
Richard opened a leather folder and took out a single document, placing it at the center of the table where everyone could see it. "I'll be direct," he said. "The family has concerns. Specifically, concerns about the validity of David's recent marriage and its implications for the estate's primary inheritance clause."
"Concerns," I said.
"The timing is irregular," Richard said. "A private contract marriage to a woman with no family standing, no financial background, and a questionable personal history, conducted without family consultation, during a period when David's health has been a documented concern." He paused. "We believe the marriage was contracted under circumstances that warrant review."
"Review," I said.
Richard smiled the way he had smiled since childhood when he thought he had won something. "A trust vote. Scheduled for the end of the month. The question before the vote is whether this marriage constitutes a valid claim on the primary inheritance clause. If the vote determines it does not, control of the trust management transfers to joint family governance."
Joint family governance. Six words that meant everything I had built was handed over to the people who had spent years trying to take it.
I looked at each of them again. Thomas was watching me with that cold satisfaction I had seen in the driveway camera feed, the expression of a man who had been patient for a long time and had decided his patience was about to be rewarded.
"One question," I said.
"Of course," Richard said.
"Who called for the vote?"
Richard's smile didn't waver. "Marcus filed the petition on behalf of the estate attorneys. Signed and dated three days ago."
I nodded slowly.
Marcus. Who was currently in my house, who I had not removed or confronted, because removing him too early would have collapsed the evidence chain I was still building. Marcus, who had apparently decided that the approaching trust vote was the moment to make his filing official and his position with my brothers permanent.
I sat with the information for exactly the amount of time required to make it clear I had heard it fully and was unmoved by it.
Then I stood.
I buttoned my jacket one button, the way my father had taught me to do when leaving a room you intended to own forever.
"Thank you," I said. "I'll be in touch."
I walked out of the dining room without looking back.
The hallway was quiet and long, and my footsteps on the marble were the only sound. I walked at my normal pace, neither faster nor slower. My face was neutral. My hands were still. Inside, I was running calculations at a speed I hadn't felt since the early years of building the company, when every decision had existential stakes and the margin for error was effectively zero.
They had scheduled the vote for the end of the month. The gala was in ten days. Adam's collection announcement was at eight.
The trust vote was designed to neutralize me before the gala, strip me of my authority and legal standing, while Adam and Bianca used the event to publicly cement their fraud. It was all connected, had always been connected, the brothers and Adam operating as coordinated parts of the same machine.
The timing was precise and deliberate, and they had done it correctly.
Except that I had seen it coming three weeks ago.
I turned the corner into the main corridor and found Brittany walking toward me from the direction of the studio. She had her sketchbook under one arm and a pencil tucked behind her ear, and she was looking at something in her hand, a fabric swatch, turning it in the light.
She looked up and saw my face.
She didn't ask what happened. She didn't say anything. She turned and fell into step beside me, matching my pace exactly, her sketchbook still under her arm, as naturally as if we had been walking these hallways together for years.
We reached the surveillance room. I unlocked it and held the door, and she walked in without hesitation.
I sat at my desk and opened my laptop. I navigated to a folder I had created twenty-two days ago, opened the primary document inside it, and turned the screen toward her.
Brittany leaned forward and read.
The document was forty pages. Detailed and structured. A complete counter-strategy addressing every legal mechanism the brothers could deploy against the marriage, the trust, and my control of the estate, with prepared responses, supporting documentation, and a timeline for deployment that anticipated exactly the move Richard had just announced in the dining room.
The date in the document header was three weeks ago.
I watched Brittany read. I watched her understand what the date meant, watched her look up from the screen and meet my gaze with an expression equal parts surprise and recognition.
"They think they're hunting me," I said quietly. "They don't know I've been hunting them."