Chapter 4 - The Boardroom Confrontation (1,500 words)
[Dawn breaks over Columbus, bringing no peace to the Price family. Darlene calls an emergency family meeting at her sprawling suburban estate, expecting her children and grandchildren to fall in line as they always have. Instead, Rebecca and Molly arrive in the dark blue Mustang, parking right in the center of Darlene’s pristine driveway, blocking Nathan’s white pickup truck.
Inside the formal living room, Darlene has hired a sharp-tongued family attorney, Richard Sterling, who attempts to intimidate Rebecca with talk of defamation and elder harassment. Sterling assumes Rebecca is an uneducated single mother who will fold under legal jargon.
He is terribly mistaken.
Molly walks into the room carrying her grandfather's grease-stained notebook from when she was eleven. She opens it to a page where Walter Price had meticulously handwritten the original distribution percentages of the trust, countersigned by a bank notary before his passing.
Julian Vance enters right behind them, placing a thick stack of certified bank subpoenas on the coffee table. Sterling's arrogant demeanor crumbles as he flips through the pages showing unauthorized wire transfers directly from the trust to Nathan’s business accounts.
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Nathan loses his temper, lunging toward Julian, but is intercepted by a local sheriff’s deputy whom Rebecca had requested to stand by for public safety. The illusion of untouchable matriarchal power shatters in real time.]
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