Vincent reviewed my notes, his eyebrows rising.
“This is comprehensive.”
“I had forty years with Nicholas,” I said. “I know every contract, every client, every detail of that business.” I leaned forward. “And I’m going to use all of it.”
“Your children won’t take this quietly,” he warned.
“I’m counting on it.”
By noon, the pieces were in motion. Vincent had filed the emergency injunction. Harold had frozen the business accounts pending investigation of suspicious activity. Martin had contacted the environmental board about protected wetlands on the proposed development site—wetlands that happened to be on my twenty acres.
I sat in Vincent’s office watching the clock tick toward 1:00 p.m., when my children would discover that their carefully constructed plan had hit its first obstacle.
My phone rang—the new prepaid one, whose number they shouldn’t have known. But Vincent had made sure they’d gotten it. I let it ring four times before answering, my voice calm.
