Chapter 2 - THE COMPANY SHE THOUGHT WAS ALREADY HERS
I left my own birthday party before dessert.
Technically, there wasn’t much dessert left.
Arthur drove me to my sister Caroline’s house in Old Greenwich because my hands were still shaking too badly to drive.
I refused the emergency room.
Caroline made me let her photograph the bruise forming near my shoulder anyway.
“You were assaulted.”
“I was shoved.”
“That is not a contradiction.”
She was right.
Caroline had spent sixty-six years being right in ways I found irritating.
I changed clothes.
Then Arthur opened his briefcase.
The cream envelope lay inside.
“This was the proxy Delilah expected you to sign.”
“I know.”
“Do you know why she needed it by tonight?”
“No.”
That answer humiliated me more than frosting had.
Vance Publishing Group was not a global empire.
We published commercial fiction, history, children’s books, and a successful group of regional magazines.
Our headquarters had moved from Greenwich to Stamford years earlier.
Annual revenue fluctuated around $180 million.
Healthy.
Profitable.
Old-fashioned enough that Delilah had spent five years telling me we were dying.
Sometimes she was right.
Book discovery had changed.
Audiobooks mattered more.
Subscription reading mattered.
Social media mattered.
Delilah understood those things better than I did.
At twenty-seven, I made her president of Vance Digital.
At twenty-nine, she launched an ambitious serialized-fiction and audiobook platform called Vance StoryHouse.
The board worried about the cost.
I defended her.
“She sees where readers are going.”
I said that more than once.
Now Arthur showed me the first document from Northbridge Media Capital.
Six months earlier, Northbridge had provided a financing commitment to an entity called StoryHouse Acquisition Partners.
I recognized the name.
“What did they acquire?”
“A company called Lantern Audio.”
I knew Lantern.
A struggling but respected audiobook producer in Brooklyn.
“Vance didn’t buy Lantern.”
“No.”
“Did Delilah?”
“Apparently.”
My stomach tightened.
“How?”
Arthur tapped the financing schedule.
Northbridge committed up to twelve million dollars.
Collateral included StoryHouse assets, Delilah’s personal interest in Vance Digital—
and anticipated voting rights in Vance Publishing Group.
I read that phrase twice.
“Anticipated?”
Arthur nodded.
“She represented that a succession transaction would give her voting control no later than her thirtieth birthday.”
Today.
My birthday was also eleven days after hers.
The party had been scheduled between them deliberately.
“You knew about this?”
“No.”
“Did the board?”
“Not that I can determine.”
I looked at him.
“Then why would Northbridge believe her?”
“That’s what we need to find out.”
I thought of Delilah standing over me.
As long as you’re alive, none of this is really mine.
The sentence sounded different now.
Not simply cruel.
Desperate.
Caroline brought coffee and sat beside me.
“What happens if Henrietta doesn’t sign?”
Arthur answered.
“Northbridge may consider Delilah in breach of representations made during financing.”
“And then?”
“They could demand additional collateral, renegotiate, or pursue remedies against StoryHouse Acquisition Partners.”
“Could that hurt Vance Publishing?”
“Possibly. Depending on what else Delilah represented.”
That was the pressure beneath the party.
Not an impatient granddaughter demanding an inheritance.
A financing clock.
Arthur closed one folder.
“There’s something else.”
Of course there was.
He produced an email Northbridge had forwarded that afternoon.
The sender was Delilah.
The subject:
SUCCESSION CONFIRMATION.
The message said:
My grandmother has approved the transition. Formal signature will occur at her seventieth birthday gathering. Arthur Bennett is handling final documentation.
I stared at Arthur.
“Did you tell her that?”
“No.”
“Did I?”
“No.”
Then I noticed the date.
May you like
January 14.
Seven months earlier.
