Page 17 of Most Eligible Billionaire

It was bad enough having my hands tied by Kaleb, unable to fully run the company as I wanted. And now?

Now it’s controlled by a dog and a scammer.

Brett’s talking about Malcomb. “…probably an extensive competency determination he and his estate people put Bernadette through before allowing this…enough not to get disbarred.”

I nod. Malcomb’s good. He would’ve ensured she was of sound mind—sound enough, anyway, for the will to hold up in a court of law.

“So. Not the straight line to control I envisioned.” I say it lightly, like it doesn’t matter. Good old Bernadette, lashing out at me one last time for making her life miserable. My rap sheet for that stretches clear back to infancy.

Again the crafty little scammer asks what things mean. What exactly Mom stipulated. She’s a good actress, I’ll give her that. With her glasses and glossy ponytail and demure dress. A simple string of dark beads.

This is the woman my mother favored over her own son?

“I’ve prepared extracts,” Malcolmb says, leading her to the table. I follow along.

Malcomb hands her a stapled sheet. “Bernadette divided her assets three ways. Henry and Brett have inherited a number of properties and a share of liquid assets save what she distributed to the five second cousins. Smuckers’s inheritance is listed here. He’s in control of the family business, Ms. Nelson.”

She looks at the sheet, stunned. “So all the cranes and…”

All the cranes.I catch Brett’s eye. The cranes? Like she thinks we run a crane company?

“She left Smuckers fifty-one percent of Lockeland Worldwide, Ms. Nelson,” Malcomb says. “It’s a global corporation that includes a dozen distinct entities.”

“What does itmeanthough?” she asks.

Malcomb shoots me a nervous glance. Yeah, he should be nervous. He’ll never work for this family again, and nobody I know, if I can help it, though he may have a future in drawing up wills for people who want to torment their kids.

He points to the sheet. “These are the companies under Smuckers’s control.” My stomach turns as she reads silently. I know the list by heart. It’s arranged in chronological order. Locke Worldwide Construction comes first—that’s the company my grandfather founded to build homes out on Long Island. The development company comes next, when my father joined in and they started building grocery stores and shopping malls. As soon as I came on as CEO, we exploded the firm out into high-rises, massive public projects, lending, even asset management, because giant buildings are investment vehicles, just like stocks, and so that’s the financial portion.

It was my vision a decade ago to spread over an entire web of related sectors, and we did it. We killed it.

He talks to the grifter like she’s an idiot.

Clearly she’s anything but.

“It means, if Smuckers wants to, he would take his place on the board with your assistance. He would attend meetings and vote on things, and his vote would decide issues, mostly around the overall direction of the company. As CEO, Henry runs the day-to-day stuff. But as a board member and owner, Smuckers would provide the vision and direction, while drawing a monthly stipend.” Malcomb points to her handout.

Brett touches my arm. “If the dog dies under suspicious circumstances, the shares go to the Humane Society. Natural life for that dog is ten more years.”

“What?” I say. “You were thinking about killing the dog?”

“Dude,” he says. “Gotta explore our options here.”

“We’re not killing thedog.”

He puts up his hands like I’m attacking him. “It won’t help anyway,” he says. “We have to pay her off. How much? What do you think?Smuckerscan choose to hand over those shares.” Brett makes quote fingers for Smuckers. Brett is a quote fingers abuser.

Kaleb wanders over. He wants to hear what I think.

I fold my arms. “This is just a business problem with a business solution. We’ve had disasters before, right?” Just this year we had to tear down a partially built distribution center because a subcontractor screwed up the rebar. That was a twenty-million-dollar mistake that wasn’t on us to fix, but we fixed it. People need to know that Locke does the right thing.

“Don’t start too low,” Kaleb says.

It galls me to give her anything. “Three million cash,” I say.

Brett winces. It’s not the amount. We won’t even notice three million. He thinks it’s too low, that’s the problem. She really is holding all the cards.

“Three million, and we don’t press charges,” I say. “If she did any kind of research, she’d know—you know.”

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