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Experts Couldn't Solve It — But the Poor Maid's Toddler Did It in Just 1 Minute

Experts Couldn't Solve It — But the Poor Maid's Toddler Did It in Just 1 Minute

Chapter 10

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Julian's older cousin, Marcus Hale, had spent years quietly circling the family company, waiting for a moment of weakness to push his own agenda onto the board. Marcus had never liked Julian's father much, had always resented that the real Hale fortune went to his uncle's line instead of his own, and he saw in Julian's grief-fogged, distracted months an opportunity finally worth seizing."You want to redirect thirty million dollars?" Marcus said flatly, sliding a folder across the boardroom table a week later. "Into scholarships for housekeepers' children, based on a letter and a stunt with a toddler?""It wasn't a stunt," Julian said evenly, though his jaw had tightened."It's optics, Julian. Sentimental, expensive optics. The board has fiduciary responsibility to shareholders, not to a story that'll make good press for a week and then be forgotten."Around the table, a few of the older board members shifted uncomfortably, unsure whether to side with the grieving heir or the pragmatic cousin who'd spent years cultivating relationships with exactly these people. The vote, Julian realized with a sinking feeling, was not going to be as simple as he'd hoped."My father wanted this," Julian said, quieter now, aware of how thin that argument sounded in a room built entirely around numbers."Your father," Marcus said, not unkindly, but not gently either, "also nearly bankrupted this company twice chasing sentiment over strategy. You want to honor his memory? Honor the version of him that actually built something, not the version who left cryptic puzzle boxes and half-finished promises."The vote was postponed a week for further review. Julian left the boardroom angrier than he'd been in months: not at Marcus alone, but at himself for, in a fleeting, exhausted moment, almost believing his cousin was right. Maybe it was sentiment. Maybe grief was clouding his judgment. That doubt followed him home into the quiet, echoing halls of a house that had never once in his entire adult life felt like somewhere he wanted to be.Meanwhile, word of the scholarship fund had already begun spreading quietly through the household staff. Amora hadn't told anyone, too afraid to jinx it, but Julian's assistant had let something slip to the kitchen staff, and by Thursday, half the household knew. For the first time in longer than anyone could remember, there was a current of quiet hope moving through a house that had spent eight months buried in grief and tension.
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Experts Couldn't Solve It — But the Poor Maid's Toddler Did It in Just 1 Minute

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