Chapter 38 Dominic
Dominic
Garrett calls the vote at nine twelve on a Thursday morning. Father's seat at the head of the table is occupied for the last time.
The legal review took forty-six hours. Outside counsel confirmed every data point in our presentation and authenticated the electronic signatures on the Meridian Holdings transfers.
Their report landed in Garrett's inbox at seven this morning.
She forwarded it to the full board with a two-sentence summary: the evidence is legitimate and the CEO has been embezzling for eighteen months.
Father sits at the head of the table. His hands are folded and his posture is impeccable. He has not spoken since the meeting began and two of the junior board members shift in their chairs.
"The motion before the board is the removal of Richard Hale as Chief Executive Officer of Hale Industries, effective immediately." Garrett reads it from the prepared statement without inflection. "All in favor."
Twelve hands rise. Two board members abstain. The abstentions don't matter. The majority is overwhelming.
"The motion carries." Garrett sets the statement down. "Mr. Hale, the board thanks you for your years of service. Your access to company systems and facilities will be revoked as of close of business today. An interim leadership structure will be announced within the week."
Father's face doesn't change. Fourteen pairs of eyes watch him for a reaction and the man gives them nothing. He absorbs the verdict the same way he absorbs everything.
I've spent thirty years learning where the cracks show.
The fracture is in his hands. His fingers, folded so carefully on the table, have gone white at the knuckles.
The pressure he's exerting to keep them still is visible in the tendons running from his wrists to his knuckles.
Those same tendons tightened before every blow I took as a child.
His hands want to move but his discipline won't let them.
The cost of maintaining that control right now must be staggering.
"I see." He says it to the room.
He stands and buttons his jacket. The gesture is smooth this time. No fumble. He pushes his chair in with deliberate precision. He doesn't look at me or Amos. He walks the length of the boardroom table and exits through the glass doors. They close behind him with a soft click.
His scent lingers after the doors shut. That dark, suffocating undertone beneath the cologne, the one that used to fill every room in the mansion until you stopped noticing it the way you stop noticing poison in the air.
It clings to the leather of his chair, and I make a mental note to have the chair replaced before I sit in it.
Everyone in the room exhales. Conversations start in low voices.
Garrett approaches me with a folder containing the interim leadership proposals.
The words "congratulations" and "CEO" appear in the same sentence directed at me for the first time.
Amos shakes hands with three board members and answers questions about the transition timeline.
I stand in the middle of it processing the fact that the man who terrorized my childhood just walked out of his own company without raising his voice.
That's what scares me. The raised voice at the last meeting was a loss of control. This silence means the control is back. A reactive Father is dangerous. A calculating Father is worse.
He's going to come for Mattaniah. I'm certain of it.
Amos finds me at the window after the room empties. His reflection appears beside mine in the glass and his hand touches my elbow.
"CEO." He says it flat.
"CFO." I turn from the window. "Garrett wants the transition plan by Monday."
"The transition plan has been ready for three months." Amos pushes his glasses up. "I wrote it the same week we started the forensic audit."
"You wrote a transition plan three months ago and didn't tell me."
"I wrote a contingency document in case the audit succeeded. Telling you about it would have required admitting I thought we'd actually win, and I wasn't ready to jinx it." The corner of his mouth turns up. "The document names you as CEO and me as CFO. The board will rubber-stamp it."
"Father walked out without a fight." I keep my voice low. "No scene, no threats, no attempt to negotiate."
"I noticed." Amos' almost-smile disappears. "That's not surrender. That's restraint."
"The last time he showed that level of restraint was before the kitchen incident." Amos' expression confirms he's drawn the same connection.
"I want a private security firm at the apartment. Twenty-four hours minimum until we have a better read on his next move."
"Already on it." Amos holds up his phone. "I texted the firm we used for the Philadelphia office opening. They can have someone at the building by this afternoon."
I look at him for a moment, this man who wrote the transition plan and arranged security and tracked the money for three years and is still standing here with his pine and cedar scent steady despite everything, like a forest that refuses to burn.
I want him in the car with me. I want both of them in the same room where I can see them and smell them and know that the man who just walked out of this boardroom can't reach either one.
"Go finish the paperwork." My voice deepens, some of my Alpha bleeding into my words. "I'm going to check on Mattaniah."
Amos' hand drops from my elbow. "Tell him I'll be home by dinner. Tell him I'm making dinner."
The drive to the apartment takes twenty minutes in midday traffic.
I spend the first ten replaying Father's exit.
The next ten I spend with my hands tight on the steering wheel, my bond mark throbbing in a way it hasn't since the first day after the bonding, the kind of ache that means my Omega is too far away and my body knows it.
Amos should be in this car. We should be going home together.
But someone has to hold the company together while it changes hands, and Amos has always been the one who holds things together.
Mattaniah is at the door when I walk in.
He's standing in the entryway with his arms crossed over his chest, and the first thing that hits me is his scent.
The coconut has gone sharp, almost bitter, cut through with the woody undertone that surfaces when he's been anxious for hours.
The apartment smells like it, like he's been pacing and leaking distress into the walls since we left this morning.
"Is it over?" His voice is careful.
"He's out. The vote carried twelve to two." I set my bag down by the door. "Garrett named me interim CEO. Amos is CFO."
His arms loosen half an inch. The relief hits the bond like a wave, and his shoulders drop with it. The coconut in his scent softens, just slightly, the bitterness receding.
"Interim CEO." He uncrosses his arms. "You got what you wanted."
The words carry weight. He's not wrong. The scheme worked and the company is ours.
"The vote should feel like a win but it doesn't."
"Why not?"
"Because you're standing six feet away from me with your arms crossed and I put you there." My voice drops an octave "My Omega won't let me touch him because I earned that too."
His mouth opens and closes as something shifts in the bond, the anger sharing space with something that makes my mark throb.
"He walked out quietly." Mattaniah says it as a statement. "That's what's scaring you."
"Yes."
"You think he's going to do something."
"I know he's going to do something. Father doesn't lose. He regroups and retaliates against whoever matters most to the person who beat him."
Mattaniah's hand drops to his throat. His fingers brush the bond marks. "You means me."
"Amos is arranging security. A private firm, round the clock, until we know what his move is."
"You really think he'd try something? After being removed by the board? With everything documented?"
"Father spent eighteen months stealing from his own company without considering the possibility someone would catch him." I hold his gaze. "His risk assessment is not the same as other people's."
The apartment is quiet around us. Amos is still at the office, and the apartment feels wrong without his pine cutting through the leather and coconut, like a chord missing its middle note.
The afternoon light comes through the living room windows at a low angle that catches the purple of Mattaniah's bond marks above his collar.
He takes one step toward me, closing the six feet to five, his arms at his sides instead of crossed. The bond tells me what that step costs him.
His hand reaches out, his fingers threading through mine. The contact after five days of nothing sends a jolt through the bond mark on my chest that makes my vision blur.
"Your hands are shaking." He says it quietly, looking down at our joined fingers.
"I know."
"The big scary CEO is shaking."
"I just watched my father walk out of a boardroom without making a sound. That concerns me more than any threat he's ever made out loud." I don't pull my hand back. "And I haven't touched my Omega in five days. The bond is making me pay for it."
"Making us both pay for it." His grip tightens. "My marks haven't stopped aching since the spare room."
"Mine either."
The sweetness in his scent is starting to warm up again, a soft flush climbing up his neck when my own scent responds. It isn't forgiveness, but his hand is in mine and the anger has quieted enough that I can feel something else underneath it.