“I understand,” I interrupted Wanda. “Business is business. You can call me Ms. Stovall. You’re here today as a witness to the fact that Ashton and I aren’t colluding. Most of the time we are working separately on our own tasks. I will have Mrs. Eriksen clear a desk for you to work here.”
Wanda was very accommodating. She sat herself down on a chair in my study. “There’s no need for all of that trouble,” she said generously as she cracked her knuckles. “I have a computer with me; I just need a chair and I’ll get right to work.”
I smiled at how quickly she settled in and left her to it. Marcus had been managing his company remotely for more than a month. Though the sales had declined, core businesses such as automobile and electrical appliances were still top in the industry, so they weren’t affected much. I was unable to foresee when GW Group would back off, therefore we had to halt the expansion of electronic gadgets and put our resources into the industry mentioned earlier to buy him more time. Lose a limb to save a life, as the saying went.
It was a good thing that Marcus had a good eye for talent. After I had finalized our business plan, the respective departments had begun working intensively toward our objectives. All I had to do every night was to provide final authorization for the documents prepared by them. After a week of doing that, White Corporation was deemed stable enough. I relaxed as well and planned to give Marcus a call that afternoon to brief him on the latest progress.
My call went through quickly but hung up on its own after a long period of silence. Perhaps there was news on Camelia and the child, I thought. That was why Marcus was not picking up at the moment. I tried again a while later and it went straight to voicemail.
“Is Mr. White unreachable?” Wanda asked. She remained close by this entire time and occasionally chatted with me. There were some legal documents that I had no authority to sign for even as acting chairman. Wanda too was anxious for Marcus’s return.
I nodded and turned to head indoors. “Yes, looks like he had turned off his phone.”
On second thought, perhaps Marcus’s personal secretary had an alternate way to contact him. I placed another call only to be informed by her that everybody in the company, including herself, was unsuccessful in their attempts to contact Marcus for the whole month. That was another dead end we ran into.
I stared gloomily at the text exchange between me and Marcus’s assistant as I stewed in my own panic. GW Group would have backed off after my previous encounter with Sean. But at the news of Marcus’s disappearance, all hell seemed to break loose at this point. We had no solid ground to work from.
Wanda surveyed the scene in thoughtful silence. Then, she got up and retrieved a document tightly wrapped in an envelope. “Have a look at this.”
I felt a sense of foreboding at her secrecy as I carefully unwrapped the parcel.
I had some experience in dealing with legal documents of various sorts; it didn’t take much for me to understand them.
Benjamin White and his wife passed away not long ago. Marcus inherited White Corporation only to realize that some shareholders had taken advantage of the power shift to embezzle public funds. Acting under this suspicion, Marcus was able to secure the evidence to prove that the company’s assets had been transferred outwards.
As it turned out that the guilty shareholders were led by an old friend of Benjamin’s. Marcus chose to resolve the matter quietly and reached out to him.
Before he disappeared, Marcus had Wanda draft up some documents. They had been notarized by a law firm since then and only awaited his signature. Upon completion, he would then have the power to expel the troublemakers.
However, his absence had been an inconvenience. To make amendments to shareholder rights, his position as the rightful owner of the corporation deemed his consent mandatory. In other words, for every day that Marcus remained at large, it was another day that the thief held on to his shareholding rights. The worst part was that he possibly already had an escape plan in place.
