Chapter 5 - THE FIRST BOARDROOM BETRAYAL
Aaron learned I was a Harborstone member when the company's general counsel contacted him.
He called me seven times.
I answered the eighth.
“What exactly are you doing?” he demanded.
“Attending an investment committee meeting.”
“You should have told me.”
I almost laughed.
“For three years, you barely asked what I did with my time.”
“Harborstone owns a significant part of my company.”
“Yes.”
“And you own part of Harborstone?”
“Yes.”
His breathing changed.
“How much?”
“Twenty-nine percent.”
Silence.
Then he whispered:
“That's impossible.”
“Why?”
“Your grandfather lived in an ordinary house.”
I stared out at the Marblehead harbor.
For the first time, I understood that Aaron hadn't merely ignored my family.
He had judged them according to the wealth they displayed.
“Grandfather preferred it that way.”
“You should have told me.”
“The trust interest was disclosed in our prenup.”
“Not the underlying investments.”
“You never asked.”
His voice hardened.
“Are you planning to use Harborstone against me?”
“No. Harborstone will protect its investments through its own governance process. My divorce is separate.”
He was silent.
Then he asked the question I had been expecting.
“Can you help me get the refinancing approved?”
There it was.
He hadn't called to apologize.
He hadn't called to ask how I was feeling.
He wanted a favor.
I closed my eyes.
“Speak to Harborstone's investment team.”
“Claire, I'm your husband.”
“And you've been making that title increasingly meaningless.”
I ended the call.
That afternoon, Prescott Global's independent audit committee began examining Cole Strategic Advisory's invoices.
Olivia provided the relevant financial records.
The internal legal team preserved Jasmine's expense approvals and related correspondence.
Several employees agreed to speak with the investigators.
One of them was a junior financial analyst named Rebecca Moore.
She had raised questions about duplicate consulting charges three months earlier.
Jasmine responded by accusing her of being disruptive.
Rebecca's supervisor removed her from the acquisition project.
Then her annual performance review was downgraded.
The same pattern had apparently repeated with two other employees.
They questioned unusual expenses.
Jasmine complained.
Their careers suffered.
I thought about the company's five hundred employees.
People who depended on their salaries.
People who had no family trust or waterfront property to fall back on.
Aaron's behavior wasn't only hurting our marriage.
His refusal to question Jasmine was creating problems for people who worked for him.
Then Nathan forwarded me a message from Aaron's mother, Vivian Prescott.
She wanted to meet.
I declined.
She responded with a longer email.
She accused me of humiliating the family and using my inheritance to threaten the company her late husband had built.
Then came the sentence that made me stop reading.
A decent wife would protect her husband's reputation instead of exposing his private mistakes.
I stared at the screen.
For years, I had attended family dinners where Vivian praised Jasmine's ambition and criticized my decision to work independently.
She introduced Jasmine to wealthy guests.
Invited her to charity events.
And told me that women from established families understood the demands placed on powerful men.
Now I wondered how much Vivian knew.
That evening, Olivia contacted Harborstone's independent review team with another development.
Jasmine's consulting company had received payments connected to the employee scholarship initiative that Prescott Global had canceled.
The funds were supposed to support professional training and education.
May you like
Instead, the records indicated that part of the budget had been redirected into a consulting arrangement requiring investigation.
And the executive who approved the budget change was Vivian Prescott herself.
