Chapter 3 - The Woman Who Built the Company Twice
I did not throw Rosalind out immediately.
Not because she deserved one more second under my roof.
Because Daphne needed a doctor first.
I called my driver, then my attorney, then Dr. Elaine Porter, Daphne’s obstetrician. Within twenty minutes, Daphne was being helped into the back seat with a blanket around her shoulders and my hand supporting her elbow. She kept apologizing.
That was the part that nearly undid me.
“I’m sorry you had to see it,” she whispered.
I stopped walking.
The sunlight outside the glass doors was bright enough to hurt.
“Daphne, look at me.”
She did.
“You are not the shame in this house.”
Her eyes filled, but she nodded.
At the clinic, the baby’s heartbeat came steady and fierce through the monitor. I sat beside Daphne and pressed my forehead to her hand because I did not trust myself to speak. Our daughter kicked once as if irritated by the entire family.
Daphne gave the smallest laugh.
“She always does that when you panic.”
“I’m not panicking.”
“You’re doing the CEO version of panicking.”
I almost smiled.
Then I remembered the safe.
The cameras.
Mason.
The company seal.
Daphne saw my face change.
“What did she take?”
I told her.
All of it.
The cash. The gold. The incorporation documents. Mason’s call.
Daphne lay very still.
Then she said, “She can’t use the incorporation documents alone.”
“I know.”
“She needs board minutes. Original member certificates. Founding contribution records.”
“I have copies.”
“She knows that?”
I hesitated.
Daphne looked at me.
The old accountant returned to her eyes—the woman who once caught a vendor overbilling us by $18,000 because one decimal place “felt arrogant.”
“Andrew,” she said carefully, “where are the original founding contribution records?”
“In the locked cabinet.”
“At the office?”
“Yes.”
Her face went pale.
“What?”
She swallowed.
“Your mother asked me three weeks ago whether old records ever expired.”
The room seemed to tilt.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because she said it like one of her strange insults. I didn’t understand.”
I did.
Rosalind had not simply stolen from a safe.
She had been looking for a pathway.
My company had started as an LLC, later restructured into a corporation before outside investment. In the earliest days, Daphne and I had contributed everything we had. My name appeared publicly because I held the founder title. But the initial operating agreement was different.
Daphne owned 42%.
She had earned it before the world knew the company existed.
Rosalind did not know that.
Or worse, she had just found out.
By evening, my attorney, Nathan Keene, arrived at the clinic with his laptop and the exhausted calm of a man used to emergencies created by wealthy relatives. He reviewed the safe footage, Mason’s call log, the staff statement, and Daphne’s ownership records.
“Your brother can’t become CEO with stolen incorporation documents,” he said.
“No. But he can create enough confusion to spook lenders, vendors, and one or two nervous board members.”
Nathan nodded.
“And if he claims your mother had family authorization to secure legacy documents?”
“He sounds plausible for about half a day.”
“In half a day, a lot of damage can happen.”
Daphne shifted on the bed.
“Then we don’t give him half a day.”
Nathan looked at her.
She was soaked, bruised, exhausted, eight months pregnant, and still thinking faster than every person trying to erase her.
That was the woman who built the company twice.
May you like
Once with me.
And now, maybe, by saving it from my family.
