Then Paige smiled.
Grant actually raised his glass.
“To Dad,” he said.
Everyone drank.
I placed my fork down gently.
Dad leaned back, pleased with himself. “You’ve always been difficult. Ungrateful. You questioned me in front of employees. You acted like the business was yours.”
I looked around the table. At Grant, who had once stolen company fuel cards. At Paige, who had charged designer bags to the corporate account. At Dad, who had forgotten that every insult teaches a person patience.
I smiled.
“Dad,” I said calmly, “who’s the buyer?”
He lifted his chin. “Everest Holdings. They’re paying fifty million.”
I laughed.
Not loudly. Not wildly.
Just enough.
Dad’s smile twitched. “What’s funny?”
I took a sip of water.
“Dad,” I said, “I am Everest Holdings.”
The room went silent.
Grant blinked. “What the hell does that mean?”
“It means,” I said, folding my napkin beside my plate, “you spent eight months negotiating the sale of our family business to a company I own.”
Dad’s face drained of color.
Paige whispered, “That’s impossible.”
I looked at her. “No, Paige. What’s impossible is thinking I’d spend fifteen years saving a company just to let all of you sell it out from under me.”
Dad pushed back from the table. “You lied.”
“No,” I said. “I used a holding company, outside counsel, and perfectly legal confidentiality agreements. You signed every document voluntarily.”
Grant’s chair scraped the floor. “You don’t have fifty million dollars.”
“I have investors,” I replied. “And unlike this family, they trust me with money.”
Dad’s hands curled into fists.
“You won’t get away with this,” he said.
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