Chapter 8 - UNCLE GRANT WANTED THE COMPANY BACKGrant always hated my father.
Not loudly.
Family-business quietly.
Thomas was older.
Inherited chairmanship.
Grant became chief operating officer.
When Harold died, Thomas reorganized the company to reduce Grant’s control.
Then later protected shares for both daughters.
Grant saw it as betrayal.
After Thomas disappeared, Grant expected leadership.
Instead, the trust blocked him.
Claire—my mother—received limited oversight.
Professional trustees controlled major assets.
Then I married Nathan.
Grant thought Nathan could be useful.
He encouraged expansion.
Debt.
Luxury stores.
International locations.
All designed to make Vale & Mercer dependent on outside financing.
Eventually, debt created the opening.
If Nathan gained my shares and defaulted—
Grant-linked lenders could seize pledged interests.
That was the real takeover.
Celeste knew only part.
Nathan knew more.
Grant designed the structure.
And the twenty-ninth birthday deadline mattered because after that date, the trust’s ownership reconciliation would expose Thomas’s survival possibility and Sophia’s rights.
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The shares would become harder to pledge.
So they needed the forged transfer completed first.
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