Chapter 8: Midnight at the Boardroom
The boardroom on the forty-eighth floor of the Durham Tower was silent when Rosalie and Manuel pushed open the double glass doors.
Eight members of the executive board sat around the polished steel table, flanked by Crawford and two junior litigators. When they saw Rosalie enter—not wearing the high-collared, face-shrouding gowns her father had forced upon her, but a tailored charcoal executive suit that left the deep wine mark on her cheek entirely visible—several of the men shifted uncomfortably in their leather chairs.
"You aren't authorized to attend an executive session, Rosalie," Crawford said, standing up and slamming his brief down on the table. "Security was instructed—"
"Security works for the building, Mr. Crawford," Manuel interrupted smoothly, pulling out the chair at the head of the table for his wife. "And the building is owned by the Sterling-Durham Land Trust. Which, as of midnight tonight, belongs to the woman you're trying to scream at."
Rosalie sat down slowly, placing a single digital audio recorder in the center of the table.
"You filed a motion claiming I am psychologically unfit to manage this corporation," Rosalie said, her eyes sweeping across the eight silent board members. "Before you vote to fund Mr. Crawford's appeal with corporate treasury money, I suggest you listen to what you're paying for."
She pressed play.
The scratchy, unmistakable voice of Emmett Durham filled the boardroom, recorded on Lorelei’s hidden microcassette in 2018:
"If you don't sign off on the Nelson Enterprises transfer, Lorelei, I'll have Griese write you up the same way we handled the girl. One signature from a county magistrate, and you'll spend the next ten years eating through a straw in Saint Jude's."
The color drained from the face of the board's chief financial officer. "Where... where did you get that audio?"
"From my mother's safety deposit box," Rosalie said, stopping the recording. "The same box that contains the wire ledgers proving Mr. Crawford’s law firm accepted four hundred thousand dollars to falsify my medical records and frame Manuel Nelson's father for embezzlement."
She slid a formal Demand for Immediate Resignation down the center of the table toward Crawford.
"You have ten minutes to withdraw the Supreme Court injunction and vacate your representation of my father," Rosalie said. "If you don't, Arthur Vance walks down to the federal prosecutor's office with the routing numbers for your offshore accounts at sunrise."
Crawford stared at the paper, his jaw working silently, his hands trembling against the edge of the table. Without a word, he picked up his briefcase, turned on his heel, and walked out of the boardroom, leaving the remaining eight executives sitting in paralyzed silence.
May you like
Rosalie looked at her watch. It was 12:01 AM.
"I am thirty years old," she said to the table. "The trust is executed. The meeting is adjourned."
