Chapter 2 - THE MIDNIGHT REVOCATION
The blood had dried on my silk collar by the time Arthur picked up the phone. He had been my corporate attorney for thirty years, a man whose mind was as sharp and unforgiving as broken glass. I didn't bother with pleasantries. I told him about the dinner, the slap, and the declaration. There was a long, heavy silence on the line before Arthur sighed, the sound of a man unsheathing a very old sword. "The Founder's Clause, Margaret?" he asked quietly. "Are you certain?" I looked at the photograph of my late daughter on my desk. She would have been horrified by the monster her child had become. "Execute it," I said. "All of it." The Founder's Clause was a fail-safe we had buried in the fine print of Valerie’s trust and employment contracts when she turned twenty-one. It stipulated that as the sole founder and primary shareholder, I possessed the unilateral right to dissolve her equity, freeze her trust, and terminate her executive status immediately if she demonstrated actions detrimental to the company's public standing or my physical person. By 3:00 a.m., emails were sent to the board. By 4:00 a.m., the banks were notified. The empire was officially mine again.
