Higher Than Charles
Chapter 08 - Higher Than Charles
There were only three people above Charles Mercer in the current corporate structure.
The board.
And one of them was Daniel.
The thought followed him into the next morning.
He ordered an internal freeze on all Alder Street demolition work.
Within twenty minutes, his chief legal officer called.
Within thirty, two board members demanded an emergency meeting.
Within forty-five, Charles arrived.
“You are panicking,” his father said.
Daniel stood at the conference table.
“I am pausing a project while we audit relocation payments.”
“You are destroying market confidence.”
“Then confidence is fragile.”
Charles looked around the room.
Nobody laughed.
Daniel had spent years becoming the kind of CEO who never embarrassed the company in public.
Now he was doing it deliberately.
The board meeting began at ten.
Daniel laid out what he knew.
The missing relocation funds.
June Hall’s resignation.
The link to the old employee relief account.
He did not mention Rachel’s letter.
This was no longer about a family argument.
At least he wanted to believe that.
Then board member Thomas Vale leaned forward.
“You authorized the relocation vendor.”
Daniel looked at him.
“What?”
Thomas slid a document across the table.
Daniel’s signature appeared at the bottom.
Approved.
Daniel stared.
“I never saw this.”
Charles said nothing.
The chief legal officer shifted uncomfortably.
Daniel looked at her.
“Who prepared it?”
She hesitated.
“Executive operations.”
“Under whose authority?”
Another pause.
“Your office.”
Daniel’s pulse quickened.
“I did not sign this.”
Thomas Vale sat back.
“Are you accusing someone of forging the CEO’s signature?”
Daniel looked at the document again.
It looked real.
Too real.
Then he remembered something Rachel had said.
You know what Dad told you it was.
Twelve years earlier, Daniel had signed an affidavit that helped destroy his sister.
Now his signature was on another document he claimed not to remember.
For the first time, he wondered whether Charles had trained him to sign things without reading because trust was easier to control than forgery.
He looked at his father.
“How many documents have you put in front of me and told me they were routine?”
Charles’s face hardened.
“Careful.”
Daniel stood.
“No. I have been careful for twenty years.”
He pushed the document away.
“Maybe that is the problem.”
The board called for a recess.
As Daniel walked out, his assistant hurried toward him.
“Sir, there’s someone downstairs asking for you.”
“Who?”
“June Hall.”
Daniel stopped.
May you like
“She says she didn’t resign.”
Then the assistant added, “And she says someone emptied her office before she arrived this morning.”
