Chapter 7 - The Trap Clears
While Silas was securing Richard Crowne in a private medical safehouse in upstate New York, Vanessa Crowne was accelerating her timeline.
Inside the sprawling Manhattan penthouse, she was standing over Adrian as he sat at his home office desk. On the desk lay three thick legal documents—the emergency authorization forms that would transfer the management of Adrian’s twenty percent voting block in Vale Global to a newly created family asset management firm... managed jointly by Adrian and Vanessa.
"Are you sure about this, Adrian?" Vanessa asked, her voice soft, full of rehearsed vulnerability. "If your father finds out you transferred the voting rights before the wedding, he’s going to be furious."
Adrian looked at the signature line. His face was pale, dark circles etched beneath his eyes from forty-eight hours of non-stop stress.
"My father called me this morning," Adrian said, his voice flat. "He told me that if I don't cancel the wedding by Friday, he’s going to petition the board to remove me as active CEO."
Vanessa gasped, covering her mouth with her hand. "He would do that to his own son?"
"He built the company, Vanessa," Adrian said bitterly. "He thinks he owns everything. He thinks he owns me. He thinks because he gave me a job and a broad education, I owe him the rest of my life."
He picked up a heavy Montblanc pen.
"If I transfer the voting rights to our joint trust," Adrian continued, looking up at her, "we control thirty-five percent of the total board votes when combined with the European hedge funds who dislike my father's conservative strategy. He won't be able to touch my position as CEO. He won't be able to touch us."
Vanessa felt a hot, euphoric rush of triumph surge through her veins. Thirty-five percent of Vale Global. An empire worth tens of billions of dollars, effectively placed under her influence. She wouldn't just be a wealthy bride; she would be one of the most powerful women in North America.
"Sign it, darling," she whispered, leaning down to press her lips against his ear. "Do it for our future. Do it so no one can ever push us around again."
Adrian pressed the tip of the pen to the white paper.
A. VALE.
He signed the first document. Then the second. Then the third.
Vanessa immediately reached out and picked up the signed papers, holding them against her chest as if they were made of gold.
"I’ll have my personal notary stamp these and deliver them to the corporate registrar right away," she said, barely able to contain the excitement in her voice.
"Vanessa," Adrian said softly, looking at her with a strange, searching expression. "You love me, right? Not the company? Not the penthouse?"
Vanessa paused at the door, forcing her warmest, most radiant smile onto her face.
"Of course I love you, Adrian," she said softly. "You're everything to me."
She slipped out of the room, rushing down the hall to her private dressing room, and immediately called Celeste.
"It's done!" Vanessa laughed, tears of excitement springing to her eyes. "He signed the proxy! We control the voting block!"
May you like
"Thank God!" Celeste cheered over the phone. "The Swiss bank called twenty minutes ago! They said an unidentified party was asking questions about Richard's account, but it doesn't matter now! Once those proxy papers are registered at the corporate office tomorrow morning, Silas Vale is powerless!"
"I’m delivering the papers to the registrar at nine AM sharp," Vanessa said, looking at herself in the full-length mirror. She looked beautiful, triumphant, untouchable. "Tell the wedding planners to upgrade the flowers to orchids. The Vales are paying for everything."
