Chapter 10: The Open Record

Three weeks after the cathedral, the internal hold on my shares was formally lifted by the board and replaced with a permanent protocol requiring my direct consent for any future action involving the registered twelve percent or the trusts. The change was recorded in the minutes without commentary. At the same meeting my father announced, in the dry language of corporate succession, that I would begin attending the executive committee as a voting member in my own right. The room received the information with the careful neutrality of people who had already revised their understanding of who I was. No one asked about the wedding. The subject had become irrelevant to the only ledger that mattered inside the tower.