Chapter 3 - THE PROXY SHE NEVER REMEMBERED RENEWING
Mara did not expose anything else in the backyard.
That surprised Ivan.
It disappointed Cynthia.
Both expected an emotional explosion they could later describe as instability.
Instead Mara picked up her handbag and walked toward the side gate.
Ivan followed.
“You’re not leaving like this.”
Mara turned.
Her hand was red and painful.
“I’m exactly leaving like this.”
“You assaulted me with a table.”
“I moved a table after you forced my hand onto a grill.”
His eyes flicked toward the guests.
“You’re exaggerating.”
Mara laughed softly.
Twenty witnesses had just become inconvenient.
She drove herself to urgent care.
The injury was superficial enough not to require hospitalization but serious enough for dressings, follow-up, and documentation.
The clinician asked how it happened.
Mara told the truth.
No euphemisms.
No “accident during grilling.”
“My husband held my hand against the grate.”
Saying it aloud changed something.
That night she stayed with her friend Leah in White Plains.
Then she opened the Hudson Forge folder she had quietly copied onto her personal laptop over the previous eight months.
That investigation had started with something smaller.
A tax document.
Mara had noticed dividend income that did not match what Ivan told her Hudson Forge had distributed.
When she asked him, he blamed their accountant.
She believed him until another number failed to match.
So she started keeping copies of documents bearing her name.
Board consents.
Bank certifications.
Supplier-diversity renewals.
Voting records.
The more she collected, the less sense the structure made.
One document bothered her most.
A voting proxy dated eighteen months earlier.
It gave Ivan broad authority to vote Mara’s shares.
Her signature appeared at the bottom.
Mara did not remember signing it.
She enlarged the page.
The signature looked like hers.
Maybe she had signed it in a stack.
Ivan often brought twelve documents at once.
“Initial there.”
“Sign there.”
“We’re late.”
She had trained herself not to slow him down.
Then she noticed the expiration date.
Thirty days earlier.
The proxy was no longer effective.
Which meant, unless another valid authorization existed, Mara currently controlled her own fifty-one-percent voting block again.
Her phone rang.
Hudson Forge’s outside attorney.
“Mara, this is Peter Sloan.”
“Hi.”
“I understand there was an incident today.”
“That’s one word for it.”
He hesitated.
“I need to ask something unrelated to the personal matter.”
“Go ahead.”
“Did you revoke Ivan’s voting authority?”
“No.”
“Then we have a problem.”
Mara sat up.
“What problem?”
“Ivan circulated written board action yesterday claiming authority to vote your shares.”
“Yesterday?”
“Yes.”
“What was the vote?”
Peter paused.
“To approve the acquisition of another company.”
Mara stared at the laptop.
“What company?”
“Bellweather Service Group.”
Mara knew the name.
It belonged to Ivan’s closest friend.
May you like
And Hudson Forge was preparing to spend millions buying it.
Using voting authority Ivan no longer possessed.
