Chapter 4 - The Boardroom Sharks
The corporate board of Reed Industries was led by Julian Vane, a man who saw Nathan’s grief as a business opportunity.
“Nathan is unstable,” Vane whispered to the board during a private session. “He’s spending time talking to the cleaning staff, wallowing in the past. It’s time we move to a managed leadership trust.”
They didn't know that Nathan had begun to change. He was no longer the catatonic widower. He was starting to look at his accounts again, and more importantly, he was looking at the people who had been stealing from him.
Claire, with her background in accounting, had noticed the discrepancies in the service accounts.
“Mr. Reed,” she said one night, sliding a document across his desk. “Your estate manager, Lydia, hasn't been stealing money, but she’s been inflating the vendor costs by 30%. She’s paying her own shell companies.”
Nathan looked at the papers, his jaw tightening. “And why are you showing me this?”
May you like
“Because if they take this company away from you, they’ll fire every person on this staff—the people who have nowhere else to go.”
Nathan looked at her, truly looking at her, and realized that his fortune was a weight he had carried for the wrong reasons. He had been holding onto it to keep the past alive, when he should have been using it to protect the future.
