"No. Let them panic. But we have a bigger problem, Carla." I opened my laptop on the fold-out tray in front of me. "Grayson Wells didn't know who I was. The security didn't know. Charlotte didn't know. Axiom saved them three years ago. We hold sixty percent of their voting shares in escrow. Why did no one in that room recognize my name?"
I heard Carla typing furiously on the other end. "Hold on. I'm pulling the Holston Holdings internal board minutes from the last three years. The public SEC filings show Axiom's cash injection, but let's see how Raymond packaged the deal to his own people."
I watched the streetlights blur past the tinted windows. Three years ago, Raymond Holston had come to my office in tears. He had begged for the capital to save his family legacy. I gave it to him, under the strict condition that Axiom retained a silent, controlling interest until the debt was cleared. I had allowed him to remain the public face of the company out of professional courtesy, preserving his dignity in the market.
"Ava," Carla said, her tone shifting from efficient to dangerously sharp. "I've got the internal ledgers. You need to see this."
A file appeared in my secure inbox. I opened it. It was a scanned PDF of a Holston Holdings board resolution dated two weeks after our bailout.
"Look at page four," Carla instructed.
I scrolled down. My eyes scanned the dense legal text. According to the document, Raymond Holston had informed his board and his executive team that the $2.7 billion rescue funds came from a "restructuring of personal family trusts" and a series of "anonymous offshore debt bonds."
He had completely erased Axiom from the internal narrative. He had erased me.
"He lied to his own board," I said, the reality of the betrayal settling into my chest like a block of ice. "He told them he saved the company himself."
"It gets worse," Carla said. "Look at the signature line on the structural flow chart."
I scrolled further. There, in stark black and white, was a forged secondary authorization. Raymond had created a shell entity, 'Axiom-Bermuda,' and classified it as a passive debt holder with no voting rights. He had deliberately manipulated the internal corporate record to make it look like Holston Holdings was completely sovereign.
"He didn't just hide us," I said, my voice hardening. "He committed corporate fraud to protect his ego. He used our money to build his empire back up, while ensuring his daughter and his staff believed they were untouchable royalty."
"That's why Charlotte thought you were an intern," Carla said. "She genuinely believes the Holston empire is entirely theirs."
"Not anymore," I said.
The car pulled up to the glass-fronted Axiom tower. I didn't wait for Marcus to open the door. I pushed it open myself and stepped onto the pavement. The cold air felt sharp and necessary.
"Carla," I said into the phone, striding toward the secure entrance. "Draft a formal notice of default based on fraudulent misrepresentation. Attach the board minutes and the forged shell entity documents."
"Who is the notice going to?" Carla asked.
"Send it directly to Raymond Holston," I said. "And copy every single member of his board, his legal team, and his dear daughter Charlotte. If they want to treat me like I don't belong in their room, I will simply take the room away."
CHAPTER 2 CONTINUED
"The notice of default is drafted," Carla said, handing me a sealed tablet as I walked past her toward my office. "But we have a rapidly shifting situation. Three minutes ago, someone at Holston IT tried to sever our administrative access to the joint data room. They initiated a hard wipe of the secondary ledger."
"They're trying to destroy the internal records before we can export them," I said, dropping my leather bag onto my desk.
"They think they can," Carla corrected, a tight smile forming. "They forgot who built their current firewall. Did they really think we’d give them three billion dollars without hardwiring a backdoor into their servers?"
"Did you engage the override?"
"Immediately. I isolated their servers and mirrored the internal drive." Carla tapped the tablet in my hands, bringing up a newly flagged digital trail.