Chapter 2 - I Did Not Fire Her That NightMy first instinct was to destroy her.
That frightens me to admit now.
Not physically.
Professionally.
Financially.
I knew what Delilah believed she owned.
Her position at Vance Publishing.
Her shares.
The Potomac house where she and Lucas lived.
The literary agency I had financed.
The monthly distributions she treated like investment income.
For ten furious seconds, I wanted everything gone before breakfast.
Walter Greene stopped me.
Walter had been my attorney for twenty-eight years and my friend for slightly longer.
He arrived at my house forty minutes after the guests left.
By then, Delilah and Lucas were gone.
So were most of the guests.
Two had remained long enough to offer statements.
My housekeeper had called the police after seeing my face.
An officer photographed the injury and took an initial report. I declined an ambulance but went to urgent care on Walter’s insistence.
By 1:15 a.m., I was back in my library with an ice pack against my mouth.
“I want her removed from the company tomorrow,” I said.
Walter opened his notebook.
“That may be possible pending investigation.”
“I want the Potomac house back.”
“We need to review the occupancy trust.”
“I want her agency funding stopped.”
“Future discretionary funding, perhaps. Existing contractual obligations require analysis.”
“I want every share canceled.”
“No.”
I looked at him.
He didn’t blink.
“Some shares have vested,” he said. “You cannot erase completed ownership because you’re angry. Unvested restricted equity is different.”
“I’m not angry.”
Walter looked at my swollen face.
I sighed.
“I’m extremely angry.”
“Then tonight is an excellent night not to sign anything.”
That was my father’s language.
He had taught Walter well.
So instead of revenge, we documented.
The urgent care report.
Photographs.
Police report number.
Statements from guests willing to speak.
Dining-room security footage.
And Lucas’s behavior.
“You saw him recording?” Walter asked.
“Yes.”
“Before or after the slap?”
“Before.”
That interested him.
My dining room did not have a hidden camera pointed at the table. I wasn’t that paranoid.
But the hallway camera captured part of the room through the open doorway.
It showed something strange.
At 7:42, eleven minutes before Delilah’s announcement, Lucas repositioned a decorative console mirror.
At the time I assumed he was admiring himself.
He wasn’t.
The mirror reflected the head of the dining table directly toward the phone he had propped near a flower arrangement.
Walter replayed it twice.
“He wanted a better angle.”
“Of what?”
“We don’t know.”
Then he asked the question I had been too humiliated to consider.
“Henrietta, why did Delilah say ‘confusion’ immediately after hitting you?”
“She was insulting me.”
“Maybe.”
He looked at the frozen video.
“Or maybe she already had a story she wanted the room to hear.”
Before leaving, Walter reviewed the ownership structure with me.
Delilah’s Potomac house was owned by the Rebecca Vance Family Trust, a revocable trust I had established after Rebecca’s death.
Delilah had a long-term occupancy right.
Not title.
Her literary agency had received $2.4 million from the same trust through a documented revolving credit facility.
Not an outright gift.
Her Vance Publishing equity consisted of a small block of vested non-voting shares plus a much larger block of restricted shares that vested over time while she remained employed and in good standing.
Her vice-presidency was employment.
Not inheritance.
I had built those protections years earlier because my advisers insisted on them.
At the time, Delilah accused me of not trusting her.
I told her structure protected both of us.
She apparently heard only the part where I had enough money to make structure irrelevant.
At 2:46 a.m., Walter closed his folder.
“You do have significant authority over the things she thinks are automatically hers.”
I looked toward the dark dining room.
“Without her permission?”
“For some of them, yes.”
I thought I would feel triumphant.
Instead, I felt sick.
May you like
Because one question remained.
Why did Delilah need twenty-three witnesses for a family humiliation?
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