Chapter 6 - The Fifty-Two Percent
Margaret glared at me, her chest heaving beneath her silk dress. "What is this trash?"
"Read it, Mother," Ethan advised quietly. "It's the reason we chose today for our wedding."
With trembling fingers, Margaret snapped open the blue folder. Her top corporate attorney, a senior partner named Harold Sterling, leaned over her shoulder, his spectacles sliding down his nose as he scanned the legal text.
Three seconds passed.
Harold’s face went completely grey. His jaw dropped open, his fingers snatching the paper from Margaret’s hand to read the seals at the bottom.
"My God..." Harold whispered, his voice cracking. "Margaret... this is a SEC Schedule 13D filing..."
"What does that mean?!" Margaret demanded, turning on her lawyer. "Speak English, Harold!"
"It means," Harold stammered, pointing a shaking finger at the document, "that three weeks ago, Vance Capital executed a hostile takeover of the primary offshore holdings of Apex Investments and Helios Trust. They... they acquired forty-two percent of Blackwood Medical Group’s voting shares."
Margaret blinked, her brain struggling to process the numbers. "Forty-two percent? That’s impossible! My family owns forty-five percent! We are the majority!"
"You were the majority, Margaret," I corrected her, taking a glass of sparkling water from Jean-Paul’s tray. "Until Tuesday morning, when Ethan transferred his personal ten percent founder's equity into Vance Capital in exchange for a permanent board seat."
Margaret froze. The room went so quiet you could hear the hum of the air conditioning unit.
She slowly turned her head to stare at her son.
"You... you gave her your shares?" Margaret whispered, her voice laced with absolute, horrifying betrayal. "You gave an outsider your grandfather’s equity?"
"Eleanor isn't an outsider, Mother," Ethan said, stepping beside me and wrapping his arm around my waist. "She is my wife. And she isn't just an investor. Her father held the original patents for our primary oncology drugs—patents you tried to steal five years ago when he was dying in a hospice."
Margaret looked back at the document, her hands shaking so violently the paper rattled like dry leaves in a windstorm.
"Forty-two plus ten..." Margaret breathed, the math finally registering in her mind. "Fifty-two percent..."
"A complete, absolute, unchallengeable controlling majority," I said, leaning forward until my face was inches from hers. "Which means, Margaret, that as of 12:01 AM tomorrow morning, you are no longer the Chairman of the Board. You are no longer on the executive committee. And you no longer have access to the family trust funds."
Margaret looked like she had been struck by a physical blow. She stumbled backward, her hand reaching out to clutch Harold’s arm to keep from falling to the carpet.
"You... you can't do this to me," she whimpered, her formidable, arrogant persona collapsing like a house of cards. "I built this company! My husband built this company!"
"Your husband built a medical institution to save lives," I said coldly. "You turned it into a personal piggy bank and a instrument of social torture. You laughed at my illness in front of God and three hundred people today, Margaret. You called me a charity case."
May you like
I took a step closer, my diamond-covered head gleaming beneath the lights.
"Now," I whispered, "let's see how much charity the board shows you tomorrow morning."
