Part 8
“Operations committee.”
“I’m on the committee.”
“You missed that meeting for a neurological exam.”
“Who approved it?”
“Gregory and Samuel Ortega.”
Samuel was the estate’s head of operations, a careful man who had worked for the family since Nathan was in college.
Nathan stared at the page.
“Sam wouldn’t do this without a reason.”
“Then we ask him.”
“No.”
Lydia frowned.
“He’ll call Gregory the second we approach him.”
“Maybe.”
“Not maybe.”
Nathan closed the folder.
“You asked what you should do last night.”
“I did.”
“Then listen when the answer isn’t comfortable. We preserve information before we confront people.”
Nathan looked annoyed.
Lydia considered that encouraging. Annoyance was closer to his normal condition than shock.
The production-office door opened.
Gregory entered with a security guard behind him.
At sixty-two, he had the compact, polished appearance of a man who believed good tailoring could prevent disorder. His silver hair was combed straight back. His vineyard boots were new enough that the soles still had sharp edges.
He looked at the guard.
“You can leave.”
The guard looked toward Lydia.
“Stay outside,” she said.
Gregory’s eyebrows rose.
The guard stepped into the corridor but kept the door open.
Gregory turned to Nathan.
“I understand last night went badly.”
Nathan rested both hands on the wheelchair arms.
“You understand quickly.”
“Claire called me.”
“When?”
“After midnight.”
“What did she tell you?”
“That you staged a public confrontation and revealed you had concealed medical progress.”
“She told you about the trust?”
Gregory’s gaze shifted to Lydia.
“You’ve been reading privileged documents.”
“I’ve been reading company documents stored in the company archive,” she said.
He ignored her.
“Nathan, we should speak privately.”
“No.”
“You’re involving staff in a family dispute.”
“Lydia is my executive assistant.”
“That does not make her a director.”
“Neither is Claire.”
Gregory’s mouth tightened.
Nathan placed the trust agreement on the desk.
“Why does this grant you power to suspend my voting rights?”
“It creates continuity in the event of incapacity.”
“Why does it let you sell vineyard parcels to satisfy a liquidity threshold you helped create?”
“That is not an accurate description.”
“Then describe it accurately.”
Gregory glanced toward the open door.
Nathan followed his gaze.
“Close it,” he told the guard.
The door shut.
Gregory removed his jacket and placed it over a chair.
“The estate is more leveraged than you admit,” he said. “Our equipment is aging. Two distributors are demanding marketing concessions. Wildfire insurance premiums have tripled in five years. You delayed necessary financing because you dislike Kessler.”
“I dislike thirty percent effective interest.”
“It is temporary capital.”
“It is predatory.”
“It is available.”
Nathan tapped the trust document.
“And this?”
“A mechanism to protect the property from paralysis.”
“By transferring control to you.”
“By creating authority where you have refused to provide it.”
Nathan’s eyes narrowed.
“I have not refused governance.”
“You vanished after the accident.”
“I was in a hospital.”
“You were unreachable before the accident.”
The words came too quickly to be strategic.
Nathan leaned back.
Gregory looked at the window.
For years, their arguments had followed familiar routes: Nathan accused Gregory of treating the vineyard like a distressed asset; Gregory accused Nathan of treating it like an heirloom immune to arithmetic. Neither spoke about the quieter grievance beneath both positions. Gregory had spent decades making the estate profitable for an older brother who received all public credit, then continued serving the son who inherited control at thirty-two.
Nathan’s father had trusted Gregory with everything except ownership.
“You think it should have been yours,” Nathan said.
Gregory’s face barely moved.
“That is irrelevant.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“I built the distribution network that kept this place alive after your father’s expansion nearly bankrupted us.”
“You were paid.”
Gregory laughed once.
There it was: the inherited cruelty Nathan had feared in others, emerging cleanly from his own mouth.
Lydia looked down.
Nathan heard himself.
He pressed his lips together.
Gregory picked up his jacket.
“You are not well enough for this conversation.”
Nathan stared at him.
“Did you obtain my medical records?”
“No.”
“Did you try?”
Gregory’s silence lasted a fraction too long.
Lydia saw Nathan notice.
“Through Claire?” he asked.
“She had legitimate concerns.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
Gregory put on his jacket.
“The board meets tomorrow at ten. I will recommend temporary suspension of your executive authority pending an independent capacity review.”
“On what basis?”
“Your concealment, last night’s conduct, and the increasingly erratic management decisions documented since March.”
Nathan’s hands tightened against the chair arms.
“Which decisions?”
“You fired a consultant during a video call.”
“He proposed tearing out eight acres of producing vines for luxury tents.”
“You refused the equipment refinancing.”
“It was overpriced.”
“You moved distributor negotiations away from the finance office.”
“Because your team offered concessions without volume commitments.”
Gregory looked at Lydia.
“And you have allowed an employee with no finance training to filter access to the controlling shareholder.”
Lydia felt the insult and the strategic purpose behind it.
Nathan’s voice cooled.
“Leave.”
Gregory buttoned his jacket.
“Ten o’clock tomorrow. Bring counsel.”
He walked out.
The security guard looked inside.
Lydia nodded. He followed Gregory down the corridor.
Nathan remained motionless.
Then he swept the travel mug from his lap.
It struck the concrete floor, burst open, and sent coffee across the base of a filing cabinet.
The sound stopped everyone in the outer office.
Nathan stared at the mess.
Lydia picked up a roll of paper towels from beside the sink.
“Don’t,” he said.
She stopped.
He bent forward in the wheelchair.
The angle was difficult. His left hand gripped the armrest while his right reached toward the mug. His fingers brushed the lid but could not close around it.
Lydia waited.
His breathing grew rough.
He tried again.
The chair shifted.
“Nathan.”
“I said don’t.”
His shoulder trembled.
The mug rolled an inch farther.
He sat back hard.
For several seconds he looked at nothing.
May you like
Then he said, “Please.”
Lydia crouched, picked up the mug, and wiped the coffee.
