2026-02-19 15:58:02
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Chapter Three Hundred and Seventy Nine
Elise spent the day with numbers.Not the emotional weight of the situation, not the accumulated bruising of the past six months, but the actual numbers, the ones that would determine what was possible and what was not, because the numbers did not have feelings about the outcome and she needed something in her life right now that did not have feelings about the outcome.Annemarie sat across her desk and they worked through the share defense mathematics with the focused quiet of two people who understood that the margin they were calculating was real and that wishful thinking about it would cost more than honest assessment.Viktor was providing liquidity. That was the most significant factor and it was substantial. He had committed to purchasing shares in the open market to support the price and had provided a facility that would allow Elise's own entity to do the same, the combined purchasing power creating a floor below which the tender offer premium became less compelling to rationa
Chapter Three Hundred and Seventy Eight
Elise called Erik at noon.She had considered not calling, had considered letting the lawyers handle all of it from this point forward, which was what her counsel had advised and which was probably correct as legal strategy and which she had decided she was not going to do because there was something she needed to hear directly from him that a lawyer's summary would not provide.He answered on the second ring."Elise," he said, and his voice had the quality it had when he had expected a call and had prepared for it, the composure of someone who has been waiting rather than someone who has been caught."Tell me about Meridian Strategic Partners," she said.A brief pause. Not the pause of someone deciding whether to deny it. The pause of someone deciding how much of the truth to offer and in what framing."I think you already know what I would tell you," he said."I want to hear it from you," she said. "Directly. Without the lawyers and without the corporate language."Another pause, sh
Chapter Three Hundred and Seventy Seven
The tender offer was published at seven in the morning on a Tuesday, timed with the precision of something that had been prepared well in advance and was being released at the moment of maximum impact, which was the morning after the criminal complaints had generated their first wave of media coverage and the Van der Meer Enterprises share price had dropped four percent on the opening.Elise read it at her desk before her coffee had cooled.The acquiring entity was called Meridian Strategic Partners, a name that had the deliberate blandness of something constructed to be forgettable, and the offer was structured with the sophistication of people who had done this before and understood where the pressure points were. A seventeen percent premium over the current depressed share price, which was enough to make rational investors pay serious attention. A narrative that presented the acquisition as a stabilizing intervention, language about protecting shareholder value and ensuring profess
Chapter Three Hundred and Seventy Six
The detectives arrived at Viktor's office at five in the afternoon, two of them, a man and a woman in plain clothes who carried themselves with the specific economy of people who did not need to perform their authority because the authority was simply present.They were professional and they were thorough and they were not unkind, which Elise noted because she had expected something that felt more like accusation and found instead something that felt more like procedure, the careful assembly of facts by people whose job was assembly rather than judgment.The three of them were interviewed separately, which Viktor's lawyer had anticipated and had prepared them for.Elise's interview lasted two hours.She sat across from the female detective, a woman named Inspecteur Prins who had the direct and patient quality of someone who had learned to distinguish between the performance of honesty and honesty itself and was not easily confused between the two, and she answered every question with
Chapter Three Hundred and Seventy Five
The formal ultimatum went to Clara's legal counsel at nine in the morning, delivered by Viktor's lead lawyer with the precision of someone who had prepared documents like this before and understood that precision was itself a form of pressure.Forty-two pages of documented evidence. The recording. The interference campaign timeline. The testimony from Dr. Vermeer at the Academic Medical Center and two other physicians who had agreed to provide written accounts of the pressure they had received. Statements from three of the families whose initial interest in the institute had been discouraged through Clara's social network. The board disclosure materials. The partnership contract analysis.And at the front, a single page of requirements.Cessation of all interference in Lukas's practice, immediate and permanent. Withdrawal of the lawsuit against Elise. A public statement acknowledging that the board disclosure had been appropriate and legally required. Acceptance of independent financi
Chapter Three Hundred and Seventy Four
Viktor arrived at Elise's office at one-fifteen.He came in with the coat still on and the forward energy of a man who had been thinking in the car and had arrived with his thinking already organized, and he looked at Lukas and Elise and Elise's counsel and took in the room with the quick comprehensive survey that Elise had come to recognize as Viktor's version of settling in."She called my chief regulatory officer as well," Viktor said, before he had fully sat down. "Twenty minutes after she called me. To ask, very pleasantly, whether he was aware of the pending review of our European pharmaceutical licensing applications and whether he had considered how certain complications at the ministry level might affect the timeline.""She is thorough," Elise's counsel said."She is thorough," Viktor agreed, without admiration and without surprise, with the tone of someone describing the capabilities of an opponent they are taking seriously. "She did her research on where Stahl Industries is
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