"I'm saying I don't know what's in her head," Donald said. "I only know what's on paper, and what's on paper is bad enough on its own."
Joshua sat back, the folder still open in front of him, quiet for a long moment. What was on those pages reframed everything that had happened over the past week. The plane, the smear campaign, the emergency board session. It wasn't just one woman's cruelty on a single bad day. It was a company culture that had spent years looking away from what Mason had been quietly building underneath all of them. Protected by a family name that assumed loyalty meant never asking hard questions.
"She still had me thrown off that plane," Joshua said finally, more to himself than to Donald. "She still ran that story about Gallon to the press knowing it probably wasn't true. Whatever she didn't know about Mason, she knew exactly what she was doing to me."
"I'm not asking you to forgive her," Donald said. "I'm asking you to stop what Mason has been doing to people who can't afford to lose what he's been taking from them."
Joshua closed the folder. "We will."
Nancy was already thinking three steps ahead, the way she always did. "This needs to go to someone on the board who will actually act on it, not just sit on it. Someone with credibility."
"The rest of them will listen to Hannah Varner," Joshua said.
Donald looked between them, some of the tension finally easing from his shoulders now that the information wasn't his alone to carry. "She's the only one on that board who's ever asked me a real question about the numbers, instead of just nodding along with whatever Mason presents."
"Then that's where we start," Joshua said.
They spent the next hour going through the documents in careful detail, building a plan. Donald continuing to quietly gather what he could without drawing attention. Nancy preparing the legal framework to present formal allegations. Joshua mapping out exactly when and how to bring it in front of the full board. By the time they left the coffee shop that night, the plan was set. They'd bring the evidence to Varner first, build a united front, and take it to the shareholders at the next full meeting.
None of them yet knew how little time they actually had before Mason made his next move. The week that followed moved fast and quiet. Donald continued pulling records from the finance archive whenever he could do it safely. Careful never to access more than he needed in a single sitting. Careful never to work late enough to cross paths with Cassandra again. Nancy built the legal framework for a formal fraud allegation, cross-referencing every wire transfer against pension disbursement dates until the pattern was airtight enough to survive any challenge Mason might throw at it. Hannah Varner met with them twice more, each time more convinced than the last. By the end of the week, she'd agreed to formally move at the next full shareholder meeting to strip both Mason and Venus of operational control. Mason for the fraud itself. Venus for years of signing off on what he'd been doing without ever asking the questions she should have.
"We have the documentation," Varner told Joshua during their last meeting before the vote. "We have the timeline. We have someone on the inside willing to testify to it directly. This isn't a maybe anymore. This is decisive."
It felt for the first time since the gala like the ground beneath them had finally gone solid. Then the night before the scheduled shareholder meeting, everything shifted. Joshua was still at his office when Nancy called, her voice tight in a way he'd never heard from her before.
"Mason just pushed through an emergency bylaw amendment," she said. "Tonight, a closed session, board members only. No advanced notice to us."
"What kind of amendment?"
"He dug up an old clause buried in the original Holstead Family Trust. Something about share dilution protections tied to founding family control. He used it to justify issuing a new block of shares, diluting every outside stakeholder's percentage, including yours." Nancy's voice was clipped. Controlled anger barely held in check. "Your 51% just dropped to 49 on paper."
Joshua went still. "That's enough to strip my voting control."
"That's exactly what it's designed to do."
Joshua closed his eyes for a moment, feeling something colder than anger settle into his chest. "And Venus backed it."
"Publicly," Nancy confirmed. "She stood right beside him in the session. She still thinks he's protecting her."
By morning, the damage was official. Joshua's chairmanship was suspended pending review of the new share structure. Donald's system access was cut the same night, locked out before he even reached his desk. A companywide memo circulating about temporary security protocols that fooled no one who actually understood what had just happened.
Joshua sat in Ridgeline's office that afternoon, the suspension notice printed and sitting on the table in front of him, feeling for the first time since the plane like the ground had genuinely dropped out from under him. Everything they'd built over the last two weeks: the board vote, Donald's evidence, Varner's support. All of it suddenly sitting on the wrong side of a locked door.
"They planned this well," Nancy said quietly, sitting across from him, the amendment paperwork spread out between them. "Mason isn't protecting Venus anymore. Not really. He's protecting himself. He knew the fraud allegations were coming, and he found a way to strip your control before we could bring them to the full shareholder vote."
Joshua rubbed a hand across his jaw, running through every option, every angle, looking for something they'd missed. "Is there anything we can use? Anything in the trust language itself?"
Nancy didn't answer right away. She was staring down at the amendment paperwork instead, flipping back through pages she'd already read twice, something catching her attention on the third pass. Her eyes narrowed. "Wait," she said, more to herself than to him.
"What?"