A corporate secretary lifted the supplemental agreement and placed it before him.
Arthur read.
Then read again.
His face drained of color.
For more than thirty years, he had worked beside Samuel Brooks. He knew the founder's handwriting, his unusual signature, and the legal restrictions he'd insisted upon when Northstar first accepted outside investment.
And he knew the man had been buried beneath a walnut tree in Westchester County three years earlier.
Arthur looked toward Graham.
“Why is Samuel's signature dated yesterday?”
Graham's expression hardened.
“It's an administrative certificate.”
Arthur stared.
“Signed by a dead man?”
The billionaire took a breath.
“There is a perfectly legitimate explanation.”
Naomi shook her head.
“No, there isn't.”
Graham turned sharply.
“You will be silent!”
Arthur stood.
“Enough.”
For a moment, the entire boardroom seemed to stop breathing.
The chairman placed both hands on the table.
Then spoke to the corporate secretary.
“No one signs anything.”
Graham stared.
“Arthur—”
“Close the execution folders.”
“But the investors—”
“Now.”
The secretary began collecting the signature pages.
Arthur looked toward the company's general counsel.
“Preserve every version of this agreement. Every email, every redline, every attachment, and every instruction concerning the supplemental consent.”
Graham's expression changed.
For the first time that morning, he looked afraid.
Arthur turned toward Naomi.
“Miss Carter, you said Samuel Brooks was your father.”
She nodded.
“Yes.”
The old chairman stared at her face.
Her eyes.
The shape of her mouth.
The small crease between her eyebrows when she was concentrating.
Then his expression softened with an emotion that surprised everyone.
“Your mother's name,” he whispered. “Was it Elena?”
Naomi's throat tightened.
“Yes.”
Arthur closed his eyes.
For a moment, he looked twenty years older.
Then he opened them and whispered something none of the other executives understood.
“Oh, Samuel. What have we done?”
Four months earlier, Naomi Carter had been living in a one-bedroom apartment in Queens, wondering whether she could afford to keep the electricity on through the summer.
She was twenty-eight.
Beautiful, intelligent, and exhausted.
Her deep-brown skin and neatly arranged black hair gave her a composed appearance even when she felt as though her entire life was falling apart. She had completed a degree in business administration, worked in document compliance for a financial-services company, and once believed that persistence would eventually earn her a secure position in corporate risk management.
Then she reported irregularities involving a senior client's account.
The company investigated.
The client complained.