Page 44 of When Ice Queens Collide
“I didn’t expect you to.”
“I want you to know—and you can take this however you want—that I knew the cost of doing this to you specifically. I have respected you for nine years, Alexandra. I’ve respected you in a way that’s not separable from the affection I still feel for you, even now. I knew what doing this to you would mean, and I did it anyway because I believed Ihadto. The way I went about it, though, I’ll be questioning that for a long time.”
It was the closest thing to an apology Vivian was capable of, Alexandra realized. Yet it wasn’t even a real apology.
“Ruth will walk you through what happens next with the legal and SEC processes,” Alexandra said. “I’d like you to listen to her and take this seriously. After the two of you finish, you’ll be escorted to your office where you’ll collect your personal effects under supervision, and then you’ll leave the building. You will not be returning. Is that understood?”
“Yes.”
She closed the folder and stood. Vivian stood as well and extended her manicured hand. Alexandra looked at it but didn’t take it. After a few awkward seconds, Vivian withdrew it without so much as a flicker of expression and let it fall to her side.
“Goodbye, Alexandra.”
Alexandra gave a curt nod then walked out of the conference room and back to her office. Now, she just had to figure out how to tell Meg.
20
Chapter 20: Simone
Simone had called for a working session, and Tess had the conference room ready by nine. The blinds were drawn against the harbor, the long table had been cleared of everything that wasn’t relevant, and three monitors were angled toward the chair where Simone always sat. On the table sat a pot of coffee and two stoneware mugs. The shareholder vote tracker was already loaded on the center screen, waiting for Simone, and Tess had set out a legal memo pad to the right of the screen, a ballpoint pen resting on top.
Tess looked up when Simone walked in. “The market has been moving against Vaughn all day, and their stock is down three points. Two of their biggest investors called us before our offices opened. They want to talk.”
Simone poured coffee into one of the mugs then sat. She took a sip before speaking. “Show me where we are.”
Tess directed her attention to the spreadsheet on the center screen. “Take a look at the column on the right.”
Simone leaned in, her fingers curling around the warm mug. They had spent four months persuading Vaughn’s largest investors, one by one, to cast their vote against Alexandra’s board. Each name on the list carried a percentage of how much the company that investor controlled and which way they were leaning. To force the vote Simone wanted, she needed commitments from investors who represented more than half of the company’s shares. Yesterday, they had been close; this morning, the column on the right showed a clean majority.
“What changed overnight?”
“Graves came over to our side at six this morning after their committee called us directly. They didn’t even wait for us to reach out to them. Two more of Vaughn’s institutional shareholders have signaled they want to come in by Monday. They’ve been holding back since September and have finally stopped.”
“Why now?”
“Because of Vivian.” Tess swiveled the right-hand screen toward her. “The board can’t credibly argue that Vaughn Industries has been making sound decisions when one of its officers was selectively shaping what the board had been seeing. The legal defense Ruth had built assumed integrity on their end, and that assumption is now gone. Patricia thinks we can have the hostile takeover protections removed within three weeks of filing.”
Simone’s eyes scanned the information in the spreadsheet, looking for any inconsistencies. The percentages were clean and ranges were conservative. There was no wishful hoping anywhere.
“This is good,” Simone said. “Walk me through the filing.”
Tess minimized the spreadsheet and pulled up a new tab with the timeline. “We’re filing on Monday morning before the stock markets open so the press release goes out at the openingbell. By eleven, we’ll be taking calls; by the end of the business day, we’ll have the narrative set for the weekend cycle. The shareholder vote happens within sixty days, and we should walk away with at least three board seats. Patricia thinks four is possible if we push for it. The restructuring proposal goes to the new board a week after the vote.”
“Is Audrey clear on the press release positioning?”
“She sent a draft of the framework this morning. It’s clean.”
“Good.”
Simone leaned forward and read the timeline line by line, looking for the places where their assumptions would break, but it was strong. She had a clean view from where she was sitting all the way to the end of the year. Vaughn Industries would be acquired, the board would be replaced, the civic partnerships would be restructured under new directors, and the sustainability division would be kept intact and accelerated. The coastal road project would either continue or be shut down, depending on what the new directors decided it was worth.
And Alexandra would resign or be removed. There was no version of this where she stayed.
She stared at the screen for a moment longer and waited. There was a particular sharpening she had felt close to a hundred times since she was twenty-three. It usually arrived the morning the votes came in—a settling in her chest, her thinking becoming clearer, and the next three moves visible. It was the thing that had carried her through every difficult quarter.
But this time, she felt nothing. She kept her eyes on the screen and gave her body another minute to catch up. Sometimes it took longer, especially when the work was messy. She tried deliberately to summon it. She thought about the call to Patricia at two and the questions she would ask, she read the timeline again, she could see herself fielding press calls first thing on Monday morning.
She couldn’t see herself going through it, though.
