Chapter 2 - The Torn Note Names Thomas
Alexander picked up the torn corner of the appointment letter.
On the back, written in blue ink, were six words:
DO NOT GIVE THOMAS THE ORIGINAL.
His anger at Jessica shifted into something sharper.
“Mom, who wrote this?”
Margaret looked toward the executives behind him.
“I don’t know.”
She had received the appointment letter by courier that morning. The message was already on the back.
Alexander looked at his chief legal officer, Thomas Reed.
Thomas’s expression barely changed.
Margaret’s brown leather handbag contained what Alexander had asked her to bring: an old stock certificate, a sealed envelope from his late father, Henry Carter, and a small black ledger Margaret had found while clearing a bank safe-deposit box.
The board was meeting upstairs to approve the sale of Carter Medical’s oldest manufacturing division.
Alexander had discovered that Henry’s estate still held a special class of founder shares.
Nobody could locate the original certificate.
Margaret had it.
Without her signature, the transaction could not close that afternoon.
Jessica had not known any of that.
But Alexander did not excuse what happened.
He told security to preserve the lobby video and asked HR to remove Jessica from the desk pending investigation.
Then he turned to his mother.
“Do you still want to go upstairs?”
Margaret looked at the torn paper.
“Yes.”
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Inside the private elevator, she opened her handbag.
The black ledger was missing.
