Chapter 20 Conflict and Cooperation
CONFLICT AND COOPERATION
*Samantha*
“That’s right.” I nodded, confirming Kaitlyn’s statement. If there existed a Guinness world record for most times a single person could regret a complicated adoption, I was surely in the running.
I sipped my margarita and let the tequila sting.
Kaitlyn crunched a chip. “So, who inherits your father’s shares once you hand over all this evidence to the police and overturn the civil suit?
And what about Oskar’s shares, since it looks like Oskar is the one who committed the felony associated with the business, which triggers the whole removal or freezing of shares clause, or whatever.
You know, can’t you do to Oskar’s shares what Oskar did to your dad’s? ”
I shook my head, dizzy with the logic loop.
“I don’t know. This is a strange situation and there’s no precedent for this.
It’ll be up to the judge, what to do, if Oskar is ultimately implicated in framing my dad.
It will also depend on what Henrik does after he’s—God willing—finally arrested.
” I drained a quarter of my margarita, then licked sugar off my thumb.
Kaitlyn arched her brows. “You think Henrik will be arrested?”
“Definitely. If not for murder right now, then for fraud, and for framing my father.”
“Then back to your father’s shares. Who will inherit them?”
I slumped back in my seat. “According to my legal team, they will follow the line of succession that they should’ve followed had they been part of his estate. They would’ve gone to my mother. Since I’m no longer in the picture—”
“Due to the adoption.”
“Yes, due to the adoption, then they would’ve gone to my mother’s closest relative, which is now my grandpa.”
Kaitlyn gave a low whistle. “What do you think he’ll do with them?”
I shrugged, the motion feeling heavy. “I don’t honestly know.”
She leaned in. “So, you could either keep quiet about Henrik framing your dad, and keep billions of dollars in Genetix shares. Or, you can turn in the evidence and the shares will go to your grandfather.”
“That’s right.”
“And you’ve decided to turn in the evidence?”
“Yes.”
Kaitlyn shook her head, setting down her chip. “That’s . . . something else.”
We sat quietly. It was the rarest of silences, where neither person feels pressured to fill it.
The margaritas melted. The table salsa congealed at the edges.
I picked at a spot in the lacquer of the tabletop and wondered whether it would have made a difference if my father had lived.
Would I have felt less like an imposter? Or more?
“It just sucks”—Kaitlyn broke into my thoughts—“that if you’d been able to figure all this out before Andreas adopted you, then the shares would be yours, fair and square.”
“But I never would have figured this out if I hadn’t inherited the shares and gained access to the internal files at Genetix.
Once I had access, discovering that Henrik worked in my father’s department as an intern and had been granted access by Oskar to the customer dataset was easy.
It was also easy to retrieve old emails and text messages between Genetix work accounts.
Once I passed all that over, my legal team did the rest.” I scooped salsa onto a chip and watched it drip, feeling the words pool in the bottom of my stomach.
“It’s a lose-lose situation,” Kaitlyn said, chewing with zero self-consciousness.
“No matter what you do. Either you clear your father’s name and prove your mom was right and then lose the shares, or you keep quiet, don’t prove your parents’ innocence, and keep the shares. I don’t know what I would do.”
“Yes, you do. You would clear your parents’ names.” I crunched the chip and, through a mouthful, said, “In fact, when I made this decision, I asked myself, ‘What would Kaitlyn do?’”
She lifted her glass in salute, then drank. “I’m just impressed you made the decision so fast.”
“I didn’t though.” I swallowed before continuing. “I made it months ago.”
Kaitlyn frowned. “What? When?”
“When I agreed to the adoption. I knew, by agreeing, I’d no longer be in line to inherit the shares if I was able to prove my parents were innocent.”
She laughed. “That’s right, I forgot you were a lawyer.”
I groaned. “I was never a lawyer. I went to law school.”
“And you passed the New York state bar.”
I let my head thud gently against the exposed brick behind me. “Kaitlyn.”
She grinned and chased it with a slurp of the margarita. “What if you asked your grandpa to give you the shares after he inherits them?”
“He can’t just give them to me, a nonrelative. Gifts that large are taxed, and I would have no way to pay the taxes.”
“Too bad he can’t adopt you, then he could put them in a trust and you could inherit them.”
I squinted at her, margarita glass halfway to my lips. “No. I . . . if he asks me what to do with the shares, I’m going to tell him I’d like for him to give them to the employees.”
Kaitlyn’s mouth dropped open. “Are you serious?”
“I think it’s what my dad would’ve wanted, you know?”
She raised a brow. “You think?”
“Yes.” I let the word hang, then rolled it around, thinking of my dad, his total disinterest in money, his inability to understand why people needed more than one kind of car or any television larger than twenty-two inches.
“He wasn’t big on generational wealth, didn’t believe it was appropriate for kids to inherit millions or billions of dollars.
He was very much a . . . proletariat, if I’m being honest.”
“That explains a lot about you.”
I smiled, a little flattered.
“I still think you should ask your grandpa to adopt you, though.”
Picking up another chip, I asked, “Why?”
“For lots of obvious reasons. You two are family, and are finally starting to act like it. Plus, then if you do finally forgive Andreas, you won’t be sleeping with your adoptive father.”
I choked on the chip, coughed, and wiped a napkin over my lips. “When you put it that way . . .” I lobbed a corn chip at her, which bounced off her shoulder and landed in her cleavage. She plucked it out, dipped it in salsa, and ate it.
“Not to bring the conversation full circle again,” she said, “but what would it take for you to forgive Andreas?”
I propped my chin in my hand and tried to answer honestly. “I think I have forgiven him, I just don’t . . .”
“What?”
“I don’t trust him yet.” I wrinkled my nose. “He’s too sneaky, and good at being sneaky. He’s calculating and always ten steps ahead of me.”
“You need Andreas to stop plotting against you.”
“Stop plotting against me, but also stop plotting for me.” I lifted my margarita for a sip.
She crinkled her brow. “What does that mean?”
“He bought his brothers out of their shares—well, most of the shares—without telling me, just so he could get my proxy approved without issue at the shareholder meeting.”
Kaitlyn’s face lit up. “That’s a grand gesture if I ever heard of one.”
“Yes, but I want to be informed. I want to be consulted. And I want to decide for myself about myself.”
“And you don’t trust him to let you decide?”
I debated how to answer before settling on, “I trust him to want, and do, what he thinks is best for me at the expense of my free will.”
Kaitlyn nodded, wide-eyed, features stark. “He’s really taking this adoptive father business too far.” Her deadpan was a force of nature.
I whipped another chip at her. “Okay, okay. No more dad jokes.”
* * *
Tara dropped me at the curb in front of Andreas’s apartment, just as the streetlights flickered on and the afterglow of sunset turned the facades a shade of oxidized gold.
I greeted the doorman and then stepped inside the building.
The lobby was cavernous and quiet, except for the scrape of my sneakers on polished marble.
I pressed the elevator call button, feeling the weight of my take-out bag, my backpack, and every unresolved conversation yet to happen tonight.
The elevator arrived with a polite ding. I stepped inside and, as the doors closed, took stock of my reflection in the mirrored panel. I looked fine, but I didn’t feel fine. Shrugging at myself, I pressed the button for Andreas’s floor.
Halfway up, my phone buzzed. The display read: “GRANDPA CARL.” I considered letting it go to voicemail—putting off another (potentially) emotionally fraught conversation until tomorrow—but I eventually swiped answer.
“Hello?” I said, voice soft so it wouldn’t echo in the metal box.
“Sammy? It’s Grandpa.”
The sound of his voice, all New England vowels and world-weariness, made my chest compress.
“Yes. Hi! What’s up?”
“I received a call from your legal team today.”
I cringed, wishing I could have crawled through the phone lines and prepared him with a hot chocolate and a blanket. “That’s right. I knew they’d be calling you. I texted you last night and gave you a heads-up.”
The elevator doors slid open to Andreas’s floor. I stepped out, phone pressed to my ear, and used my thumb to open the door. I balanced the call, the food, and my nerves as I made my way inside.
“Sammy, they’re saying that I’m going to inherit your shares. That can’t be right.”
“That is right, Grandpa. Those shares are yours.” I dropped my bag and coat onto the table just inside the entryway, then toed off my shoes.
I heard a chair scrape in the next room, the faint clink of glass, and then saw Andreas moving at the periphery. He was at the circular table in the living room, laptop open, hair damp like he’d just showered. He looked up at me, eyebrow raised in question, but didn’t interrupt.
I mouthed, It’s my grandpa, and he instantly re-sorted his face into neutral.
My grandfather said, “They’re yours. They belong to you. You are Sylvia and Lawrence’s daughter. Who am I?”
I moved into the living room, set the takeout on the table, and paced in slow, deliberate circles while I marshaled my words. “Not in the eyes of the law, I’m not their daughter anymore.”