His eyes flashed.
“Vanessa has nothing to do with our business.”
Vanessa stared at him.
There it was.
Minutes earlier, she had been loyalty itself.
Now she was nothing to do with anything.
I looked at the ring on her hand.
“Apparently she has something to do with the jewelry.”
A few people inhaled sharply.
Roman stepped closer and lowered his voice.
“You don’t understand what you’re doing.”
That sentence used to work on me.
It reminded me how young I had been when my father died, how easily Roman had convinced me that adulthood was a room only he possessed the key to.
I looked at the sealed folder in his hand.
“I understand the proxy expired at nine.
I understand the Moretti shares are mine.
I understand two transfer authorizations contain signatures I didn’t write.
And I understand you have until tomorrow morning to produce the records the board requested.”
Roman’s jaw tightened.
“You think some paperwork makes you powerful?”
“No,” I said.
“It makes the truth documented.”
He glanced around the room.
That was his final mistake of the evening.
He needed the witnesses to fear him again.
So he threatened them.
Not explicitly.
Roman was too careful for that.
He spoke about loyalty.
Consequences.
Careers that depended on remembering who had helped create them.
Debts that could be called.
Friendships that could disappear.
Each sentence made the attorneys in the room more attentive.
Each sentence made Vanessa take another step away from him.
When Roman finished, one of the trust attorneys quietly said, “Thank you.
We’ll include those remarks in the record.”
For the first time, Roman had nothing to say.
Vanessa removed the sapphire ring.
She walked toward me and held it out.
“I didn’t know,” she whispered.
I believed that she had not known about the trust.
I did not believe she had been unaware that Roman was married.
Those were different things.
I closed her fingers around the ring again.
“I don’t want it.”
Roman stared at us both.
Vanessa placed the ring on the table instead.
Then she picked up her purse and walked out of the ballroom alone.
Roman did not follow her.
He was too busy watching his empire become conditional.
The next morning, the emergency board meeting lasted less than two hours.
Roman was removed from authority over the Moretti-controlled assets while the disputed transfers were reviewed.
Independent accountants were appointed.
The company’s counsel preserved records.
Several transactions Roman had treated as personal decisions now required board approval.
