Chapter 14 - THE SHADOW ON THE BOARD
Not everyone was willing to let the past stay in the museum.
In the winter of Benjamin’s seventeenth year, three former directors of Vance Global filed a petition in county court.
They claimed that the transfer of the residential properties to Common Table House fifteen years earlier was an illegal liquidation of corporate assets.
They wanted the land returned.
They wanted the affordable housing units sold at auction to satisfy legacy creditors.
They hired a firm from Chicago that specialized in corporate reclamation.
For two weeks, process servers stood outside our doors.
They tried to serve papers to Sophia as she walked to work.
They photographed Chloe entering her art studio.
They called Marissa’s employer, hinting at financial irregularities.
It was the old game.
Isolate.
Intimidate.
Make the noise so loud that peace feels too expensive to keep.
I called a meeting in the grand dining room.
David, Marissa, Rebecca, Sophia, and Chloe sat around the long oak table.
“They want us to settle,” Rebecca explained. “They think we’ll give them two of the properties just to make the lawsuit go away.”
Sophia leaned forward.
Her eyes were dark and steady.
“If we give them one brick, we tell them their threat worked.”
“It will cost fifty thousand dollars in legal fees just to fight the discovery motion,” Rebecca warned.
Chloe took a sketchbook from her bag.
She opened it to a drawing she had made when she was five years old—a picture of a dinner plate divided into two sections, one labeled BOYS, one labeled GIRLS.
She slid it across the table.
“Sell one of my original paintings,” Chloe said. “Use the gallery fund. We don’t negotiate with people who think tables belong to creditors.”
We did not settle.
Rebecca filed a ninety-page counter-brief exposing thirty years of self-dealing by the three former directors.
When the judge read the historical audits, she dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice in less than twenty minutes.
She ordered the directors to pay our legal fees.
I used those fees to install new solar panels on the roof of the housing units.
May you like
The sun powered the lights in every room.
Free of charge.
