Chapter 4

With the evidence airtight, I went straight to the police.

I handed everything over and filed formal charges—Phil Whitney and Eliana Harding, for hiring a killer, for causing a death, for malicious slander, for all of it.

I had just handed in the evidence and stepped out through the station doors when Joel called. His voice was low.

"Selina, I dug into it. In the two years you were gone, Phil already reshuffled the whole company. Every senior employee who didn't fall in line, he swapped out for his own people."

"He replaced a lot of the company's clients too. Last year he opened up the new Ridgemont market and won the backing of the four great families there. Taking the company back now won't be easy."

"Selina, I watched you build all of this. Phil is clever. You need to be careful."

My heart sank. I'd always known he was moving people around. I told myself it was just a young man impatient with the old guard, that some reshuffling was normal.

I never imagined he'd been planning it all along, closing in step by step to swallow up my company.

Thirty years in business, and I'd seen plenty of cunning, two-faced people. I wasn't a fool. I'd simply trusted Eliana's sweetness and devotion, and his fawning little courtesies, and let my guard down.

The police arrested Phil under the law. But barely two days later, he was out on bail.

The reason: the doctor had turned around and claimed I'd coerced his confession, that the chain of evidence was too weak, that some of the testimony couldn't stand, that the conditions for holding him weren't met.

The moment I heard, the cold went through me like I'd dropped into ice.

I had underestimated Phil. Ten years, and he'd already built himself real standing, real power.

He sat in the conference room on the twenty-eighth floor of Harding Group, looking at me with pure arrogance.

"Mom, you said yourself your health isn't good. Wouldn't it be better to just rest at home? Why go digging up things that happened years ago?"

"Layla really did die in an accident. I'm heartbroken too. Why do you have to be so suspicious of everything?"

Then he walked over and took my arm, sighed, put on his grief.

"What was between Layla and me can't be explained in a sentence or two. I didn't even know she was your real daughter. But whether she was or wasn't, I'm still your son-in-law, aren't I? From now on I'll take her place and look after you properly."

Watching him stand there so unbothered, so certain it was all his due, I couldn't hold the fury back any longer. My hand came up and I slapped him hard across the face.

"Phil Whitney. Layla was so good to you. How could you have the heart to kill her? The police may have let you go, but I never will."

I turned to face every shareholder in the room and said it flat and hard.

"Given that Phil Whitney's conduct is disgraceful and that he is currently under investigation, I move to remove him from the position of executive CEO."

The words had barely left me when an unfamiliar face stood up from a corner, sharp and urgent.

"Ms. Harding, you can't bring a personal grudge into the company."

"Mr. Whitney just signed a lifetime partnership with the four great families of the Ridgemont region. Strip his executive authority and the company loses half its orders."

I looked the man over. It came back to me in a haze that he was often at Phil's side. When had he earned a seat on the board?

Before I could even rebuke him, several of the other shareholders actually nodded along.

"Ms. Harding, the company's growth has to come first. Isn't there some misunderstanding here?"

"Ms. Harding, don't be upset. We're all family. Whatever it is, just lay it out and talk it through. There's no need to drag it into a shareholders' meeting."

"Ms. Harding, Mr. Whitney has poured himself into this company. Profits have tripled three years running. You can't act out of anger."

One after another they rose and crowded around me, coaxing.

Looking at those faces, strange and familiar at once, I let out a scornful laugh. Phil was good, all right.

In just a few years, he'd bought up and taken hold of Harding Group from top to bottom. I had become chairwoman in name only, an emptied-out shell with no real power.

Two old friends spoke up, unhappy.

"Mr. Whitney is caught up in an old case now. Suspending him is for the company's own good—don't let it drag the company into a scandal."

"Exactly. Ability is one thing, character is another. Have you all forgotten the principle we followed when we founded Harding Group with Ms. Harding? Honest, grounded, upright dealing."

In an instant the conference room split in two, arguing until there was no end to it.

Phil just watched me coldly across the crowd. After a long moment, he slapped the table.

"Since we can't agree, then let's open a board election for executive director."

He gave me a contemptuous look.

"Mom, I only hold ten percent of the shares myself. But Ellie has twenty. Together that's thirty percent."

"And the agreement the four great families of the Ridgemont region signed names me specifically. They'll only deal with me. So tell me—am I not better suited than you to serve as executive CEO of Harding Group?"

Something in me went cold, and then I remembered: when Eliana was pregnant with her second child, I'd given her ten percent. On top of her original ten, they really did hold thirty percent between them.

And I held thirty percent too.

That day, everyone coaxed me not to cling to something in the past, praising how filial and sensible Eliana was, how capable Phil was.

They told me to let go of my personal grudge, to put the company first, to put the families of a thousand employees first.

That day, I walked the streets a whole night, watching a slow red glow rise at the edge of the sky.

Phil Whitney, you're just betting that Harding Group is my life's work, that the thousand employees inside it are my family, that I can't bear to destroy it.

You're wrong.

If wicked people can't be brought to justice, then the bigger the company, the more harm it does to the world.

Slowly I picked up my phone and dialed a news reporter.

"Nine o'clock today. Please be at the conference room on the twenty-eighth floor of Harding Group on time. It's a first-hand story—I'm going to donate all of Harding Group's assets to society for the public good."