When Bobo took her seat at the head of the table, her eyes immediately locked onto Sir Rum. seeing him there, the very person she had concluded an investment deal with only the other day, sent a jolt of ice-cold dread through her veins. He shouldn’t be here. This was a board meeting for the company’s internal directors, not a place for outside investors, especially ones so new to the fold.
Seeing him sitting comfortably among her oldest colleagues, she began to have a very bad feeling. The atmosphere in the room was heavy, suffocating. With all of them gathered there—her trusted team and this new, wealthy stranger—the puzzle pieces began to click together in her mind. She was starting to get a terrifying idea of what could be happening, though a part of her desperately wanted to be wrong.
Bobo placed her hands on the table to steady herself. She decided to cut through the silence and make her position clear immediately.
"Is this some sort of coup that you have decided to do?" Bobo asked, her voice ringing out in the quiet room. She looked from face to face, trying to catch their eyes. "Have you all decided to go against me?"
The reaction from the board members was telling. As they turned around to face her, there was no unified front in their expressions. A couple of them were smiling, a smugness playing on their lips as if they had been waiting for this moment for a long time. Others, however, couldn’t even meet her gaze; they looked away, staring at their papers or the floor, their faces burning with evident shame.
It was Rum who broke the silence, his voice smooth and dangerously calm.
"Oh, it seems the Young Miss has understood the situation a lot quicker than we expected," Sir Rum said, leaning back in his chair with an air of casual dominance. "I thought we might have to explain it in detail, but you are sharp. There is no need for a long explanation."
He gestured around the table at the six other directors. "As you know, each member in here holds five percent shares in your company."
Bobo listened, her heart hammering against her ribs.
"That leaves a total of thirty percent held by this board," Rum continued, acting as if he were teaching a child basic arithmetic. "And do you remember our deal that we signed the other day? In the end, you had placed in an additional investment, and we agreed to place our money in for a total of fifteen percent equity."
He paused for effect, tapping his finger on the polished wood of the table.
"Now, my math isn’t the best, which is odd considering I’m in this line of business," he said with a dry, mocking chuckle. "But there’s no need to be a mathematician when you can get other people to do the work for you, right?"
His smile widened, sharp and predatory. "But if you add our fifteen percent to everyone else’s thirty percent, that adds up to, what? Forty-five percent? So, if we were to group all of our shares together into a single voting block, I think we might have a majority."
Bobo was biting her lip so hard she tasted blood. How could this have happened? Growing up in the family she had, she was no stranger to the concept of betrayal. She knew that in the world of business and high-stakes family politics, there was such a thing as being stabbed in the back. It was a lesson she thought she had learned well.
That was precisely why she had been so careful. She had made a point to never give up the majority control of her company. She had structured it specifically to avoid this nightmare.
And right now, according to her knowledge, she held forty percent. She was the biggest shareholder in her own company, owning half of it outright. Yet, even with that massive stake, the reality of the situation dawned on her. If they grouped together, they formed a massive, opposing force that could overrun her decisions, paralyze the company, or force her hand.
Her mind raced, trying to find the logic in this betrayal. There were a few things that didn’t make sense.
There was no prior link between the members of the board and Sir Rum. These were people she had hired, people she had worked with for years. Surely, they would be more inclined to be in debt to Bobo, the woman who gave them their careers and shares, rather than to a random stranger who had just invested in the company yesterday.
Not only that, but to even have a chance of building up this coalition, it would require all six people to work together in perfect unison, including the outsider. This level of coordination behind her back was something she just never imagined could happen. They were supposed to be loyal.
"You planned this?" Bobo said, her voice trembling with a mix of rage and disbelief. "You came to me with that investment on purpose, in order to take control of the entire company."
She glared at Rum. "How long have you been working with them?"
Rum just smiled, refusing to give her the satisfaction of a direct answer. "You have the wrong idea regarding the details, but you’ll find out soon enough," he answered cryptically.
Bobo realized she wasn’t going to get anywhere with him. Instead, she turned her attention to the others in the room—the people she actually knew. She stood up, her chair scraping loudly against the floor.
"Did I not treat you nicely enough?" she shouted, looking from the accountant to the directors. "Did I not listen to what you wanted? If you had an issue with things, you could have just come to me! We could have talked about it!"
Although nothing had officially happened yet, the threat was clear. With majority control—or even a deadlock—they could win every crucial vote. They could force a vote to replace the Chairman. They could force a vote to replace the CEO.
They could control where the investments and money should go. Bobo realized with horror that if this succeeded, she would be reduced to nothing more than a passive investor in her own creation. Depending on what they planned to do with the company, she would have absolutely no influence over its direction.
If the company needed more capital, they could dilute her further. If Bobo decided to sell her shares to someone else, she would do so at a loss. But she had a sinking feeling that their reasoning for doing this wasn’t financial. It couldn’t have been for the sake of the company’s health.
That was another reason why she hadn’t been on guard as much as she should have been. What reason would anyone even have to target her company right now?
They had yet to release a single product. The timing seemed absurd. Or maybe... maybe that was exactly why this was the perfect time. She was on the cusp of multiple projects nearing completion.
Once these projects were released to the public, there would be hundreds of opportunities to bring more money in. They would finally be profitable, and the valuation of the entire company would skyrocket.
Maybe the plan was to sell the company out from under her before it got too big. or maybe they just didn’t trust the company in her hands.
"You’re looking down because half of you are guilty, right!" Bobo shouted, slamming her hand on the table. The silence of the directors was deafening. "Because YOU know I’ve done nothing wrong! I’ve done nothing wrong but supported you and given you jobs!"
As she stood there, ready to wallow in her anger and the stinging pain of betrayal, the heavy double doors of the meeting room opened.
"Don’t worry though, there will be one more joining us," Rum had said.
Bobo turned, expecting a lawyer or another corporate shark. What she was surprised to see was one of her own researchers walking in.
He was wearing his work attire, looking out of place in the boardroom yet walking with a strange confidence.
"I have come late, but I will introduce myself," the man said. He stopped at the end of the table and offered a polite, almost theatrical bow to the room. "I will be the new acting CEO and Chairman. My name is Ramon."