Chapter 4 - The Eviction
"There is no room," I said, smoothing the lapel of my jacket. "Your reservation is canceled."
"You can't just throw me out on the street!" Richard yelled, the panic finally breaking through his polished exterior. "My clothes are in those bags! My laptop is in there! The company servers are on that hard drive!"
"Ah, yes," I said, looking down at the beautiful, monogrammed Italian leather luggage sitting at his feet. "About the company."
I snapped my fingers.
From the lounge area, Caroline Marsh, my lead divorce attorney and corporate litigator, stepped forward. She was carrying a thick manila envelope. She walked directly up to Richard and slapped the envelope against his chest. He caught it instinctively.
"What is this?" he choked out.
"Those are divorce papers, Mr. Sterling," Caroline said brightly. "And an emergency corporate injunction. Since Davenport Holdings secretly provided the sixty million dollar capital injection that saved your fund in 2018, the terms of that blind trust gave Victoria a 51% controlling interest in your firm in the event of personal misconduct."
Richard stared at the envelope as if it were a bomb.
"She invoked the clause an hour ago," Caroline continued. "You are no longer the CEO of Sterling Financial. You have been locked out of the trading floors. Your company car has been repossessed. And those leather bags were purchased with corporate funds, which means they belong to the company."
I nodded to the security team.
Two guards stepped forward and seized the handles of his Italian leather luggage.
"Hey!" Richard shouted, lunging forward. "You can't take those!"
"Give him a bag for his personal effects," I instructed the head of security.
May you like
The guard pulled a heavy-duty, black plastic trash bag from his pocket. He shook it open with a loud, aggressive rustle and dropped it at Richard's designer shoes.
"You have two minutes to put your clothes in the trash bag, Mr. Sterling," the guard rumbled. "Or you leave with just the suit on your back."
