Chapter 7 - THE COMPANY MY FATHER STOLE
I stared at Madison, convinced I had misunderstood.
“My grandmother owned shares in the company,” I said.
“Thirty-five percent,” Rachel confirmed the next morning after examining the estate records. “And those shares were supposed to pass to you.”
The documents showed that the transfer had been completed four years earlier, shortly after my thirtieth birthday. I was legally entitled to a significant ownership stake in Bennett Construction.
Yet I had never received a shareholder statement, dividend, or voting notice.
Someone had concealed every trace of it.
Rachel traced the paperwork to an amendment filed shortly after the transfer. It reduced my recorded stake to zero and listed a replacement beneficiary.
My father.
The amendment carried my signature.
I had been in California when it was supposedly signed.
“This changes everything,” Rachel said. “Your father may have diverted company funds while hiding your ownership. We need the original filing and proof of the falsified amendment.”
Then we discovered an even bigger problem.
Bennett Construction had secured a bridge loan using company assets, with Northstar listed as a related entity. If the company defaulted, a lender could seize equipment and sell off valuable contracts.
Worse, the same loan documents included a statement claiming I had personally approved the restructuring.
My father had used my nonexistent consent to protect a business he had stolen from me.
Rachel looked over the file.
“He’s preparing to sell the company’s remaining assets.”
“To whom?”
She checked the buyer’s information and went completely still.
May you like
The purchasing company belonged to my father’s oldest business partner.
The man who had attended every family holiday for twenty years.
