Chapter 5 - The Reckoning in the Boardroom
Three months later, the legal hammer fell.
Garrett had spent weeks trying to smooth things over, sending flowers, writing desperate letters, and even attempting to use mutual friends to mediate. I ignored every single attempt. My only response was delivered through legal motions.
The deposition took place in a glass-walled conference room on the top floor of Vanguard Holdings—the very empire Garrett thought he owned.
Garrett sat across from me, looking exhausted and visibly thinner. His hotshot lawyer looked confident until Evelyn Vance laid out the evidence.
"We are invoking the absolute dissolution clause of the Vance-Holdings Trust," Evelyn stated, her voice cutting through the room like a scalpel. "Due to gross marital misconduct and egregious emotional negligence resulting in the abandonment of a dependent, we are executing the immediate transfer of Mr. Corporate Chief’s executive shares to Clara."
Garrett’s lawyer scoffed. "You can't prove negligence caused the boy's medical emergency."
"We aren't proving medical malpractice," Evelyn replied smoothly. "We are proving a total breach of fiduciary and moral duty to the family entity. And more importantly, we have a statement from Miss Elena Rostova."
Garrett froze. "What?"
"Elena didn't want to go down with your sinking ship, Garrett," I spoke up, speaking directly to him for the first time in months. "When she found out your son died while you were in her bed, she realized what kind of monster you are. She handed over every text, every flight itinerary, and every hotel booking. She’s already resigned."
Garrett looked at me, his eyes wide with a mixture of terror and realization. "Clara, please... Vanguard is my life. It’s everything I’ve worked for."
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"Ethan was my life," I replied, my voice steady and iron-clad. "And you traded him for an evening of ego strokes. Sign the papers, Garrett. Or we go to a public trial, and I will make sure every news outlet in this country knows exactly what you were doing while your five-year-old son was asking where his daddy was."
His hands shook so violently he could barely hold the pen. But he signed. With a few strokes of ink, he went from a multi-millionaire CEO to a penniless, disgraced outcast.
