Chapter 6 - ELAINE STOPPED STANDING BESIDE CHARLES
Elaine left Charles the next morning.
Temporarily, she insisted.
She checked into the Carlyle with two suitcases and called Clara from the room.
“Your father says I’m being theatrical.”
Clara sat on Naomi’s kitchen counter drinking coffee.
“Are you?”
Elaine laughed once.
“Probably.”
“Okay.”
“I’m still not going home.”
Clara smiled faintly.
“Also okay.”
Elaine became quiet.
“I did know something about Trent.”
Clara closed her eyes.
“Mom.”
“Not the affair.”
“What?”
“Last month I saw Brittany leaving his apartment building at seven in the morning.”
Clara stopped.
“And?”
“She said she’d stayed with a friend in the building.”
“You believed her?”
Elaine’s silence answered.
“You chose to.”
“Yes.”
Clara felt anger rise.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Elaine began crying.
“Because you were happy.”
“That is not protection.”
“I know.”
“You let me finish planning a wedding.”
“I know.”
Clara stared at the wall.
Her mother’s betrayal was smaller than Brittany’s.
That did not make it painless.
“Dad told you about the trust?”
“No.”
“Nothing?”
“He told me Whitmore was under pressure.”
“Did he tell you how much?”
“No.”
“Did he tell you Grandpa’s trust was collateral?”
Elaine’s voice hardened.
“If he had, I would have stopped him.”
Clara believed her.
Walter Bennett had been Elaine’s father.
She had inherited her own separate assets outright.
Charles had no control over them.
That explained why the trust mattered to Charles.
He could not simply reach into Elaine’s money.
He had reached into their daughters’.
Elaine said, “I want to see the statements.”
“We’re getting them.”
“We?”
“Naomi and the institutional trustee.”
“Does your father know?”
“He does now.”
Elaine exhaled.
“Good.”
By afternoon, the institutional trustee suspended Charles’s unilateral transaction authority pending an internal review.
Harlan Pierce opened its own compliance inquiry after Naomi notified them that Trent had a personal relationship with two beneficiaries connected to accounts he advised.
Trent was placed on administrative leave.
The replacement financing did not immediately disappear.
It did pause.
Charles called Clara.
“Do you understand what you’ve done?”
Clara listened.
“Yes.”
“Harlan Pierce froze the committee process.”
“Because their adviser was sleeping with two people inside one client family.”
“They didn’t need to know that before Monday.”
Clara laughed.
“That sentence is why you’re in this position.”
“Whitmore could default.”
“Then tell the board.”
Charles went silent.
“You haven’t.”
“Not fully.”
Clara stood.
“I am a director.”
“You’re my daughter.”
“In the boardroom I’m a director.”
“Do not lecture me about the company I built.”
Clara’s voice became quiet.
“Then stop using the fact that you built it as permission to hide what can destroy it.”
She ended the call.
Ten minutes later Elaine called.
“Your father just told me you betrayed him.”
Clara rubbed her forehead.
“Did you agree?”
“No.”
Clara waited.
Elaine continued.
“I told him I’m coming with you to the board meeting.”
Clara sat up.
Elaine had never attended a Whitmore board meeting.
She owned nineteen percent of the company.
She had simply spent thirty years letting Charles vote her shares by proxy.
“Mom.”
“I revoked his proxy this morning.”
May you like
Clara stared at nothing.
Charles was beginning to lose more than control of the wedding.
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