Chapter 3 - THE DEAL WYATT REFUSED
The police arrived before midnight.
Not because Abraham expected them to determine corporate ownership in a basement.
Because Wyatt was chained to a wall.
Because his knee was injured.
Because Sabrina had admitted enough on Abraham’s recording to make the immediate situation impossible to treat as a normal marital dispute.
Wyatt was taken to the hospital.
The chain was photographed and preserved.
The documents remained in the house until investigators could determine what was relevant to the assault and unlawful-restraint allegations.
Sabrina left through another entrance with counsel.
The New Year’s party ended without fireworks.
At the hospital, imaging confirmed Wyatt had a serious knee injury requiring orthopedic treatment.
Painful.
Potentially long recovery.
Not a magical permanent disability.
Abraham sat beside him.
Neither knew how to speak.
Finally Wyatt said:
“You shouldn’t have come.”
Abraham almost laughed.
“You were chained to a wall.”
“That’s why.”
Abraham looked at him.
Wyatt continued.
“She knew you might interfere.”
“In what?”
“The acquisition.”
There it was.
The same deal Abraham criticized almost a year earlier had changed.
Mercer was no longer buying another company.
Someone wanted to buy Mercer.
“Who?”
“Blackridge Logistics.”
Abraham knew the name.
A national freight company had been consolidating smaller warehouse operators across the Northeast.
“How much?”
Wyatt closed his eyes.
“Thirty-one million.”
Abraham stared.
That was far more than he expected.
“Why wouldn’t you sell?”
“I might.”
“Then what was Sabrina forcing?”
“The structure.”
Wyatt explained.
Blackridge’s initial proposal would buy the real estate and operating assets.
Employees would transfer.
Wyatt would receive his share of the proceeds.
Sabrina wanted a different transaction.
A private investor group she had assembled would buy Wyatt’s controlling membership interest first, then negotiate the Blackridge sale itself.
“What investor group?”
“Redfern Capital Partners.”
Abraham frowned.
“Never heard of them.”
“You weren’t supposed to.”
“Who owns it?”
Wyatt looked at him.
“Sabrina owns part.”
Abraham sat very still.
“How much?”
“Twenty-five percent.”
“And the rest?”
“She won’t tell me.”
That mattered.
Wyatt continued.
“If I assign fifty-one percent of Mercer to Redfern before Blackridge closes, Sabrina’s group controls the company.”
“At what valuation?”
“Nineteen million.”
Abraham felt sick.
Redfern wanted control of an asset already attracting a thirty-one-million-dollar offer.
“Why would you agree?”
“I didn’t.”
“So she chained you downstairs?”
Wyatt looked toward the hospital curtain.
“It started before that.”
Abraham waited.
Wyatt whispered:
“She’s been trying to make everyone think I’m mentally unstable for months.”
The sentence sounded familiar.
Too familiar.
Harold Mercer had done the same thing to Abraham’s mother whenever she questioned money.
May you like
And Abraham suddenly wondered whether the worst thing he had passed to Wyatt was not the company.
It was the family’s inability to recognize control until somebody finally made it physical.
