Chapter 4 - He Was Moving the Company Before I Could Claim My Share
By noon, Sloan had seen everything.
The shareholder transfer.
The Ravelin paperwork.
Lyra’s recording.
Three weeks of messages in which Thain repeatedly promised that his divorce was “already being handled.”
Sloan didn’t smile often.
That afternoon, she did.
“He was trying to outrun you financially.”
“What happens now?”
“We make sure he doesn’t.”
She filed an emergency request requiring disclosure of any attempt to transfer significant company ownership.
By 2:00, Thain’s attorney was calling.
By 2:15, Thain was calling me again.
At 2:27, he sent a message.
YOU ARE GOING TO DESTROY EVERYTHING WE BUILT.
I stared at it.
Then typed:
I didn’t build Ravelin.
I didn’t sign that guarantee.
And I didn’t move company shares to your mother.
His typing bubble appeared instantly.
Then vanished.
Appeared again.
Vanished.
Finally:
We need to talk without lawyers.
No.
Kala, you don’t understand what is happening.
Then explain it to yours.
I blocked him.
For the first time in three months, I felt something other than grief.
I felt clarity.
That evening, Daniel finished tracing the attempted stock transfer.
Thain planned to move twelve percent of his company into a family trust controlled by his mother, Cynthia.
The paperwork described it as “estate planning.”
The date told a different story.
It had been drafted eleven days after the affair began.
“He was preparing for divorce,” I said.
Sloan nodded.
“Possibly.”
The word bothered me.
“Possibly?”
“We need to separate what we know from what we suspect.”
That was why I liked her.
She never gave me comforting lies.
Then Daniel found an email attachment buried inside the valuation records.
A confidential projection prepared for Thain’s investors.
It showed that if the funding round closed at the expected valuation, Thain’s personal stake could be worth more than $16 million.
He had reported less than one-quarter of that value in our household financial disclosures.
But another line mattered more.
Under “Contingent Liabilities,” Ravelin was listed.
Next to it were two initials.
T.H.
K.H.
And beside my initials someone had written:
May you like
Consent pending.
They knew I had never approved it.
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