Chapter 8 - The Empire I Had Built at Home and Lost
The Delaware instrument could not be released until the following morning.
For once, there was nothing useful I could do.
That was harder than any board fight.
I went home.
Not the penthouse Marcus liked to mock as proof I had become detached from my roots.
The old brick house Rachel and I bought when Ava was four.
I had kept it after the divorce because neither of us could bear to sell the place where our family had once worked.
The house was mostly empty now.
Too many rooms for one man.
I stood in the kitchen staring at height marks still penciled into the pantry doorway.
Ava at eight.
Ava at eleven.
Ava at fifteen.
I had missed one of those measurements because I was in Singapore.
Rachel wrote the date for me.
That night Ava came by without warning.
She found me sitting at the kitchen table with Eli’s letter.
“You look terrible,” she said.
“Thanks.”
She sat across from me.
“Are you going to lose it?”
“The company?”
She nodded.
“Maybe.”
I expected fear.
Instead, she asked, “If you did, who would you be?”
That question hurt more than Marcus’s forged resignation.
“I don’t know.”
“That’s the problem.”
I looked at her.
She continued.
“When Mom left, you said you were going to change. Then you worked harder because being abandoned embarrassed you.”
“That’s not fair.”
“No. It’s accurate.”
I almost snapped back.
Then I stopped.
For twenty years, I had treated every threat as something to overcome through endurance.
Investor doubt.
Cash crises.
Competitors.
Marriage problems.
Grief.
I knew how to survive everything except stillness.
Ava looked at Eli’s letter.
“Was he the one who kept you human?”
“Sometimes.”
“Then maybe you need to figure out how to do that yourself.”
She stood to leave.
At the doorway, she turned.
“I hope you don’t lose Horizon.”
Then, after a pause:
“But I hope you lose whatever made you think it was the only proof your life mattered.”
She left me alone with that.
The next morning, I drove to Delaware with Rebecca and Jenna.
On the highway, I kept thinking about my daughter’s question.
If I lost the empire, who would I be?
By noon, a trust officer placed a sealed gray envelope on the conference table.
My own signature crossed the back flap.
So did Eli’s.
Fourteen years old.
I had completely forgotten signing it.
Rebecca looked at me.
“You ready?”
No.
But I nodded anyway.
May you like
She opened it.
And Marcus Sloan’s entire takeover began to unravel.
Related Stories
