Chapter 12 - Whispers in the Boardroom
The thirty-fifth floor of the Chicago Financial Center was in total lockdown.
Julian Vance stood in front of floor-to-ceiling glass windows overlooking Lake Michigan, his cell phone pressed to his ear, his face contorted in vicious panic. On the glass coffee table behind him lay copies of the morning Chicago Tribune with front-page headlines detailing the arrest of Arthur Franklin and the pesticide raid in Oakhaven.
"I don't care what the Oakhaven DA is claiming!" Vance screamed into the receiver at his chief lobbyist. "Franklin is a rogue mid-level manager trying to save his own skin! Buy off the district judge, get an emergency injunction against the state inspectors, and freeze the regional accounts before Walker accesses the audit server!"
"Julian, it's over," the voice on the other end responded with trembling fear. "The Department of Justice just issued federal subpoenas for all Apex Logistics maintenance records from 2022. Federal agents are en route to the downtown tower right now."
Vance hurled his phone against the marble wall, shattering it into fragments.
The heavy mahogany doors to the boardroom swung open. Five senior members of the Vance Family Trust and three major hedge fund managers filed into the room, their expressions dark and grim.
"Julian," said Donald Vance, his seventy-year-old uncle and senior trustee. "The stock is in freefall. Maple Grocery shares have plummeted fourteen percent since opening bell, and trading has been halted twice. What have you done?"
"I did what was necessary to protect our family's twenty-two percent equity!" Julian snarled, pacing across the room like a caged panther. "Robert Walker is using this company as a personal grief therapy project! He put an eighteen-year-old cashier in charge of regional operations and opened free food shelves that eat directly into our retail profit margins!"
"That 'eighteen-year-old cashier' just generated forty million dollars in earned media goodwill for the franchise in forty-eight hours," retorted Harrison Cole, lead manager of the Vanguard Equity Fund. "Foot traffic in Oakhaven is up thirty-five percent. Community goodwill is at an all-time high. And you are under criminal investigation for poisoning milk!"
"It was a setup!" Julian shouted, slamming his palms on the boardroom table. "Walker framed me to seize total control of the board! We still control forty-eight percent of voting proxies if we consolidate our private equity blocks. We call an emergency shareholder vote for next Friday. We vote Robert Walker out as Chairman, terminate Emma Brooks, and dismantle the Lily Walker Foundation once and for all!"
The board members looked at each other with uneasy calculations in their eyes. In the cutthroat world of corporate finance, morality was cheap, but power was absolute.
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"If you lose that vote, Julian," Donald Vance warned in a cold, raspy voice, "our family will be wiped out financially, and you will spend the rest of your life in federal prison."
Julian Vance adjusted his silk tie, his eyes burning with venomous desperation. "I won't lose. Because before Friday arrives, I'm going to make sure Emma Brooks and Robert Walker don't have a single ally left standing."
