Chapter 20
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 opening bell.
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.
This was new, she realized. She had stopped a deal before.
Twice, actually, and both times were because the numbers didn’t add up to a favorable result.
She had never stopped a deal that was working out for her, never mind when it was working best. She put her hands flat on the table and pressed down through the pads of her fingers, the way she sometimes did at the gym when she wanted to feel her own weight.
Her palm was warm, and the wood was cool.
Simone had built her life around being a person who did what needed to be done, but that person wasn’t in the room here today. It struck her all at once that she did not want to win.
The realization cracked something open inside her. She didn’t want to win. She wanted to leave the office, drive north, and put her hand on Alexandra Vaughn’s hand. Simone wanted, more than she had wanted any acquisition in nearly three decades, to not be the thing that broke Alexandra.
Simone lifted her gaze and met Tess’s eyes. “Stop the filing.”
Tess’s hands stilled on the keyboard. “For how long?”
“Indefinitely,” she said, then paused. “I’ll have a decision for you on Sunday night.”
“All right.”
Simone had made thousands of decisions during acquisitions, and she rarely, if ever, equivocated. But she had this time, and as much as she wanted to deny it, she knew exactly why.
“Move Patricia’s call to three,” Simone said, finding familiar ground again. “Tell her to not put a team on it until I confirm on Sunday. And tell Audrey to hold the press rollout. No prep work in London until I clear it.”
“Understood.” Tess lowered her head and went back to writing notes.
Simone stood and crossed to the window on the other side of the room.
She drew the slat of the blind aside an inch with a finger.
The harbor was the same flat gray it had been for weeks, and a container ship was moving north past the headland, the red of its hull the only color visible.
She let the blind fall and picked up her coat from the back of her chair.
“I’ll call you Sunday,” Simone said, almost like an afterthought.
“Sunday,” Tess confirmed.
Simone walked out.
Simone took the route that ran past Vaughn Industries on her way out of downtown. The executive lot was visible from the road, and Alexandra’s space was empty. Whatever was happening at headquarters today, Alexandra wasn’t there. She kept driving north.
When she pulled up, the gate was already open. The other times Simone had been to Alexandra’s house before, the groundskeeper, Esther, had buzzed her in over the intercom. Today, it stood open as if someone had forgotten it, and she drove through without slowing.
She parked beside the front steps. For a moment, she sat with her hands on the wheel. She hadn’t prepared a speech and still had no idea what she was going to say. She got out of the car anyway.
The bell was small and brass, set into the doorframe at shoulder height. Simone pressed it once, and she could hear the echo of the chime.
Alexandra opened the door. She was wearing a heavy gray sweater that was a half-size too large for her and a pair of jeans.
Her hair was pulled back in a low, but still loose, updo.
She held a half-empty mug of coffee that was no longer steaming.
She was thinner and had dark circles under her eyes, and she looked at Simone with no emotion.
“Simone,” she said, and even her voice sounded thin.
“Alexandra.”
Neither of them said anything for a moment. Raindrops hung in the cedars beyond the porch, and the mist was fine enough that it didn’t make a sound. Alexandra hadn’t yet moved out of the doorway, and Simone didn’t move toward her.
“You’re alone?”
“Yes, I sent Esther home early this morning.” Alexandra’s voice was lower than usual and slightly rasped. “I wanted to be left alone with my thoughts today.”
Simone shifted her weight to her other hip. “I can go,” she said quickly.
“No. Come in.”
Alexandra opened the door wider, and Simone stepped past her into the foyer.
The house smelled faintly of woodsmoke, and the dim, gray light streamed in through the floor-to-ceiling windows.
Alexandra closed the door and stood with her back to it for a beat, her eyes on the floor.
Then she turned and walked toward the back of the house, Simone trailing behind her.
The kitchen was past the dining room and through a short hallway, and it seemed even bigger than she had remembered.
It was long and bright, even on an overcast day, and the windows faced the lake.
The fire she had smelled was in a small hearth at the kitchen’s far end, and the coals were low.
A plate with sliced apples was on the island, the slices browning on its edges.
Alexandra walked to the sink and washed the mug, then placed it gently in the dish rack to dry. She turned and leaned against the counter and looked at Simone, crossing her arms.
“Why are you here?” Alexandra asked pointedly.