Chapter 5: The Company Was Hers Too
The document was a financial audit.
Forty-seven pages.
Commissioned eight months ago by a forensic accounting firm Robert had used for thirty years.
Every page had been reviewed by two independent attorneys before tonight.
Daniel didn't pick it up.
He looked at it the way a person looks at something they have been expecting and dreading in equal measure — with a kind of exhausted recognition, as if part of him was almost relieved that the waiting was over.
"The company," Mei said.
"Tell me what you think you know about how it started."
Daniel's voice was flat.
"I built it from the ground up.
I had a concept, I found funding, I—"
"You had a concept," Mei said.
"That part is true.
You came to my father's firm four and a half years ago looking for seed capital.
You were turned down." She paused.
"Do you remember why?"
He didn't answer.
"Because the business plan was strong but the personal financial history was not," she said.
"You had two failed ventures.
Significant personal debt.
No collateral." She opened the audit to page three.
"My father turned you down.
But I didn't."
Eleanor, who had been standing very still near the window, turned slowly.
"What did you do?" she asked her son.
"I met him at a conference three weeks later," Mei said.
"He didn't know who I was.
I didn't tell him my father had already reviewed his proposal.
I told him I was an independent investor." She looked at Daniel.
"You were very charming."
"Mei—"
"You were," she said, without cruelty.
"You were charming and you were passionate about the idea and I believed in it.
I believed in you." She turned another page.
"I funded the first eighteen months personally.
One point four million dollars, structured as a private loan with a five-year repayment term and a minority equity stake."
Eleanor sat down.
"You married her knowing she was your investor?" she said to Daniel.
He said nothing.
"He proposed eight months after the funding was arranged," Mei said.
"Before I had told him who my father was.
Before he knew about this house." She closed the audit.
"I have asked myself many times whether he would have proposed if he had known those things from the beginning.
I still don't have a clean answer."
The CFO's call had gone to voicemail.
Now a text arrived.
Daniel glanced at it and went very still.
Robert noticed.
"The board meeting," Robert said.
"Yes.
We know about that too."
Daniel looked up sharply.
"There is a motion scheduled for Tuesday," Robert continued, "to dilute Mei's equity stake from twenty-two percent to less than four.
The motion was drafted by your corporate attorney and co-signed by three board members you brought in during the last restructuring." He paused.
"All three of them were informed this evening that the motion will not proceed."
"You can't interfere with my board—"
"Mei owns twenty-two percent of your company," Robert said.
"Her attorney sits on the audit committee.
She has every legal right to interfere." He said the last word without any particular emphasis, which made it land harder.
"The motion has been withdrawn.
The three board members have been advised to seek independent counsel."
Daniel stood up.
"This is my company.
I built it.
Whatever funding came from wherever — I am the one who made it work.
I am the one who spent six years—"
"Sit down, Daniel."
It was Mei who said it.
Quietly.
The same way she had said it before.
He sat down again.
She looked at him for a long moment.
"I don't want your company," she said.
"I never wanted your company.
I wanted you to be the person I thought you were when I gave you that money." Her voice didn't break.
It didn't need to.
"I wanted you to be honest.
I wanted you to be kind.
I wanted you to be the kind of man who, when his mother raised her hand to his wife, would stand up."
The table was very quiet.
"You smiled," she said.
"You smiled and you said she was teaching me."
Daniel opened his mouth.
"Don't," she said.
"There is nothing you can say to that."
He closed his mouth.
Eleanor was looking at her son with an expression that had no name in it that was comfortable.
She had sl@pped a woman in her own home.
She had done it because her son had let her believe it was acceptable.
She was beginning to understand the full shape of what she had been part of.
Robert gathered the audit and placed it back in the file.
"Monday morning," he said, "Mei's attorney will file for divorce.
The petition will include a full accounting of the marital assets, the original loan documentation, and the attempted property transfer." He stood.
"I would strongly recommend you do not attempt to remove anything from this house before then."
Daniel looked at his mother.
Eleanor looked away.
His phone lit up a third time.
He didn't look at it.
Mei stood, walked to the large window at the far end of the room, and looked out at the garden.
The garden she had planted herself, in the first spring after they moved in.
She had done it because she loved it, not because she thought she would need to remember it as hers.
Behind her, she heard her father close the file.
She heard Daniel push his chair back.
And then she heard him say, very quietly, to no one in particular:
"I did love you.
In the beginning.
I want you to know that."
She didn't turn around.
May you like
She didn't answer.
But her hand, resting against the glass, went very still.
