KNEEL FOR NO ONE: Once A Servant, Now A Billoniare

CHAPTER 6

The board meeting lasted two hours and seventeen minutes.

In that time, Elias spoke in the measured careful way of a man who understood that the room was a battlefield and that the best thing a soldier could do on a battlefield was waste none of his ammunition.

He removed the four Holt-aligned board members by founding chair authority. He did it with the appropriate documentation on the table and he gave each of them the time to read what was in front of them, because he was not a man who needed to humiliate people to make a point. The point made itself.

He confirmed Stella Maris as acting chief executive officer, pending a full executive restructuring. She received this without celebration, with only a slight straightening of her spine that said she had prepared for it.

He called for an independent audit of all financial activities from the past thirty-two years and directed Solomon to appoint the auditing firm by end of week.

He said nothing to Frank Holt beyond what the agenda required.

And Holt, to his credit or his strategy, said almost nothing at all. He sat and he watched and he listened and he made notes on a small pad with a gold-tipped pen, and when the meeting closed he stood and he left with his aide and he did not look at Elias on his way out.

Which told Elias more than any words would have.

Stella appeared at his side when the room had nearly emptied.

"He'll come back hard," she said.

"I expect so."

"He has government contacts. He'll use them."

"So do I," Elias said. "As of nine this morning."

She considered that. "You've barely had thirty-six hours with this."

"I know."

"And you're not scared."

It wasn't quite a question. Elias looked at her.

"My mother spent thirty-two years being scared for me," he said. "I think that's enough fear paid on my behalf." He picked up the document folder. "I'll be in tomorrow. What does the company most urgently need?"

Stella blinked. She had clearly expected him to leave with his legal team and process everything from a safe distance.

"A working payroll system," she said, recovering. "Holt's people have been siphoning from the

staff pension fund. People haven't received proper contributions in eighteen months."

Elias looked at her.

"Fix it," he said. "Today if possible. Whatever authority you need, you have it."

She stared at him for a half-second. "You've been here three hours."

"The people in this building have been here for years," he said. "They've waited long enough."

He picked up his jacket and walked out.

He took a taxi to the hospital. Not a car service, not one of the vehicles that Solomon's team had offered. A taxi, because he needed the time between the boardroom and the hospital ward to be the same man who had walked out of both places.

Cora was in the corridor outside his mother's room. She was twenty-eight and looked like a younger version of the photographs Solomon had shown him of their father, which was an observation Elias did not share with anyone because it was too layered to explain quickly.

She grabbed his arm when she saw him.

"Are you going to tell me what's happening?" she said. "There were men here, and then different men came, and the hospital tells me the deposit was paid by something called Cole Continental Holdings which I typed into my phone and found a Wikipedia page for, and Elias, that page says..."

"I know what it says," he told her.

She stared at him.

"Come here," he said, and he walked her to the chairs at the end of the corridor, and he sat down with his sister, and he told her everything. From the beginning. From Solomon's phone call to the board meeting that had ended forty minutes ago. He told it all evenly and in order because that was the only way he knew how to give people information that was too large to absorb quickly.

Cora was silent for a long time when he finished.

"Mama knew," she said.

"Yes."

"All this time."

"All this time."

Another long pause.

"She used to pray," Cora said softly. "When she thought I was asleep. She used to sit at the kitchen table at night and pray, and I could never make out all of it but she always said the same thing at the end." She looked at her hands. "She would say: Lord, let him be ready when the time comes."

Elias looked at the door to his mother's room.

"I'll go in," he said.

"Elias." Cora touched his arm. "Are you in danger?"

He thought of the men in the corridor that afternoon. He thought of Frank Holt's gold-tipped pen moving across his notepad.

"Yes," he said. "Probably."

"And you're doing it anyway."

"Someone already paid the price for me not to know." He stood up. "I won't disrespect what that cost her."

He went in.

His mother was awake. The afternoon light came through the window at a low angle and it caught the grey in her hair and the particular tiredness around her eyes that had nothing to do with the illness and everything to do with the years.

She looked at him. He sat.

"Tell me it went well," she said.

"It went well," he said.

She closed her eyes and breathed out like a woman setting down a weight.

"Edmund always said," she began, and then she stopped.

"What?" Elias asked.

She opened her eyes.

"He used to say that a man's life isn't measured in what he builds." Her voice was very quiet.

"He said it's measured in what he makes sure his children don't have to rebuild." A breath. "He worried he wouldn't have time to finish."

Elias looked at his mother's hands, the hands that had sewn and cleaned and pressed and provided for thirty-two years with no explanation owed to anyone.

"He had enough time," Elias said. "He just needed someone to show up."

She reached over and put her hand over his.

"Your father," she said, "would have liked you very much."

This time Elias's voice held.

"I'll come back in the morning," he said. "Before the procedure. I'll be here."

"I know you will," she said. "You always were."

He was at the hospital entrance at seven when his phone rang.

Unrecognised number. He answered and said nothing.

A voice came through. It was not old. Thirties, perhaps. Measured.

"Mr. Cole." A pause. "My name is Dane Holt."

Elias was still.

"My father's aide gave me this number," Dane said. "I am asking you to hear me out before you decide what to think of that." Another pause. "I know what he did. To your father. I found out three years ago. I have spent three years trying to find a way to undo something that cannot be undone."

Elias listened.

"I'm not asking for anything," Dane continued. "I'm not asking for my board position, I expect that's gone, and I don't want it. I have documents. Things I found over the past three years. Files that detail what happened in 1992 in more forensic detail than your attorneys currently have." A pause. "I don't know what the right thing is here. But I know that carrying this has been the worst three years of my life and I know that what my father did was wrong and that you deserve to know everything."

The entrance to the hospital was busy with the changing of evening visitors. Elias stood to the side and watched people move through the doors.

"Where are you?" he asked.

"Outside your building," Dane said. "The Cole Tower."

Elias looked at the time. "I'll be there in twenty minutes."

He ended the call.

He stood for a moment at the hospital entrance.

Then he hailed a taxi.

Because the thing about inheriting a father's world was that you also inherited its complications, and there was no version of this where you got to choose only the clean parts.

Dane Holt was standing outside Cole Tower in a grey suit that looked like it had been put on that morning in a different emotional state. He was around thirty-seven and had the face of a man who had not been sleeping well for several years.

He saw Elias and held out an envelope.

"Everything I found," he said. "It's yours. I just need you to know that not everyone who carries his name chose to."

Elias looked at the envelope.

He took it.

"I know," he said. "I'll be in touch."

Dane looked at him for a moment, as if not sure what he had expected but surprised by what he got.

He nodded once. He turned and walked away down the street.

Elias stood outside the building his father had built in 1989 with an envelope of evidence against the man who had killed his father, and looked up at the building's name in chrome letters above the entrance.

Cole Tower.

His name.

He then walked in through the main doors.