CHAPTER 3

(Day of the will reading).

"Come, let's talk over there.," attorney George J. Miller asked his client before could do something stupid. George was well aware of the angry looks that Max was giving the assistant. "Carla, please wait for us."

Lenis entered the boardroom at that moment and saw her husband nodding his head at the woman they were leaving alone. She understood perfectly what George was asking: to take care of her, to stay there, and to help with whatever she needed.

Lenis nodded to her husband and approached the lady who was still not quite back to reality.

Meanwhile, the two men passed into the CEO's office through an adjoining door that connected the two places. Max entered and George closed the wood behind him.

The owner of the corporation turned to George.

"How serious is all this?"

"I can't figure it out yet, but turning down an inheritance isn't a game. Much less if we're talking about a foundation protected by the state, even if it's not subsidized. Also, you know what it means not to comply with the laws of a company that does not allow the immediate assignment, transfer, or sale of its shares. The fines can be astronomical."

Still standing, they whispered for fear of being overheard, when they well knew that walls were soundproof. At that moment, they did not remember any of that, prudence won.

"What the fuck did Fitzgerald suggest?"

George raised his eyebrows at his friend's question. Max didn't even want to say it.

"That man suggested... that she and I...?" Max let the words out of his chest with a laugh that was contained, turning his face from laughable, to bizarre. "Did he suggest that she and I get married?!" Maximiliano took two steps back and said nothing for a couple of seconds, without losing the visual connection with his lawyer either. "Is this circus for real?"

"Max..."

"Don't fuck with me, George, don't fuck with me!" he exhaled with an unfunny laugh.

The CEO turned and headed for a small bar. He poured himself a stiff drink and gulped it down.

Shook his head and thought, deeply, about the mess he was in. Or the mess he would be in if he contested the will.

He refilled his glass again but decided to drink more slowly.

"How do we know Carla had nothing to do with this?" He asked, turning around to face George, who was still standing with his arms up, making the lapels of his unbuttoned suit expand even more.

"I don't know, but you should point out that she came without a lawyer. It doesn't make much sense to want to screw someone legally, coming to the battle ring without defenses."

"She's that asshole's daughter!" George gritted his teeth after the shout. "She's kept her last name from us." Max took all the contents and set the glass down on the small wooden bar with a dry sound. "You know that man was practically broke, he didn't have half of what he owned. I imagine you are thinking what I am."

"Max, calm down. And low your voice."

"This place is soundproof!"

George inhaled and exhaled a good puff of air.

"I know what you can make out of all this. A broken man who gives his inheritance to a business rival and ties his daughter to him?"

"I can't be wrong..."

"It's a logical thought, but there are prenuptial contracts."

"I can't be wrong..."

"No matter how much of a wedding you have, she can't keep anything of yours, not even the share you inherited from her father."

"What are you talking about, George?" Do you say "wedding," you say? Wedding?! What wedding? Who's talking about marrying anyone here? Marrying who?! That fucker Davison's a twisted bastard and you know it. He's always been crazy and today..." he growled to calm himself down, showing his teeth, trying to control. "Today he proved it to me. And boy, did he prove it."

"You are practically the owner of his company now and you can do whatever you want with it after a year, but the board of directors stipulates that you must exercise your role, which only includes attending a few meetings, I have noticed that the positions of the other associates are still active. Remember, we are talking about a different country, with other laws, very different from ours. We are talking about a people with ancient rules, who think that the head of a company must have a respectable marital status."

"Nonsense."

"You must be married, Max. You don't want to, I know. But if you don't practice for a year, you'll be fined by the IRS. You could delegate functions, but we don't know how reliable these people are to run the company on their own. If they cheat you, fire somebody while you are unemployed, or break any law, you'll be the one who will have to answer to the authorities. So the best thing to do is to look at this matter with a serious face." Max was breathing like a bull. "Whether or not, Carla has anything to do with this. Find out."

"I have to call Peter. Didn't he check her out? How come we didn't know she was that guy's daughter?"

"Peter looked into Carla Davis, not Carla Davison. Besides, I'm sure with everything that was going on, that time was an investigation done on the spur of a hard moment. There wasn't enough time to go deeper."

Maximiliano sighed and dropped into one of the armchairs in the small room a few feet from his desk.

George did not sit down immediately.

"This doesn't make sense," Max whispered.

The lawyer walked over and sat on the edge of an armchair across from his friend.

"Face Carla, investigate her. I'll help you whatever you need with and I'll shield documents. I'll contact people in England if I need more specifics, but I know these types of companies. For some reason, Davison & Associates went bankrupt. For some reason it was tied to an unsubsidized foundation and for a more powerful one, this will be created. It doesn't matter. Do you want to build that exclusive hotel? You will get it. And will be the best investment of your life. Millions and not Euros, but Stellar pounds. You have the solution in your hands, Bastidas. You just have to comply for one year, getting married only in documents, it means nothing as long as you talk to her and make it clear that you only want her part of the shares, that you want to buy them from her. They are not worth much, you can offer the double. She will understand, because both your hands are tied. Neither she can sell, nor can she buy without first complying with the law. Carla Davis, or Davison, can't do anything unless exercises her role as president of the foundation, married, for a year."

***

Lenis offered Carla a relaxing cup of tea at the other end of the table, closer to the window that surrounded the boardroom. The secretary to the CEO knew that the heat was better in that corner.

"Are you feeling better?"

Carla nodded, looking at her for just a second, before returning her gaze to the landscape, a skyline filled with buildings and city life.

"Carla." Max's voice carried across the room, from end to end, as well as her skin, sending a rush of nervousness through her system.

Beyond nerves, it was worry. She still didn't understand what was happening, and already she had to make drastic decisions. Besides, she was sure she would lose her job.

"Don't get up," he asked when saw that she would.

Lenis nodded to her without having to speak and left them alone in the vastness of a boardroom in absolute silence.

"Carla did not obey. She stood up from her chair and faced him, her back to the glass.

He only came close enough, placing his right hand on the back of one of the chairs surrounding the conference table.

His left hand cupped, lifting part of the jacket of his beige three-piece suit.

They looked at each other without saying anything for what seemed like a long time, until Max decided to ask his questions, avoiding showing the annoyance he was carrying.

"First of all, explain to me why you hid your real last name." Carla swallowed thickly. "I can fire you in a second for lying to us for so many years, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt."

"Max, I..." She closed her eyes and exhaled, opening them again. "Mr. Bastidas," he smiled gracelessly, "I still don't understand what's happening..."

"What don't you exactly understand? That you are the daughter of an English millionaire who is trying to screw me until after his death?"

"I want you to understand, Mr. Bastidas, that the man who has been mentioned here ad nauseam, is also trying screw to me," she dared to say, retracting for speaking that way to the man who could leave her in the street with the snap of his fingers. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to talk to you that way."

"Why don't you call me by my first name? You used to. What's stopping you now?"

"It's the right thing to do."

"The right thing to do," Max repeated, leaning closer to her.

He was furious and didn't want any more trouble. Between his enemies in jail, an ongoing investigation into the extent of the damage caused, an explosion from which he was still recovering, and a busy end of the year, struggling to regain financial confidence that has lost at strategic points in his business thanks to all the debacles of the previous months, the last thing the CEO of this corporation wanted was to get into more trouble. And he had just gotten himself into a truly complicated, atypical, and unexpected one. The distrust accompanied him on every path of his life since he turned out to be one of the swindled businessmen of a man named Ferit Turgut, his mother's ex-husband after certainly being blamed for those same swindles of which he was a victim, after having faced justice. That distrust made its presence felt there, in that room, after Carla herself confessed to him who she was.

"The right thing to do, Carla, would have been to put your resume here with your real last name. I'm sure we would never have guessed you were Fred's daughter. Why hide you like that?"

"I'm a senior assistant in the Protocol department of this company, I have been for more than five years, and I think I have done my job well. I'm nobody's daughter, I'm not the daughter of a fortune or a will. I'm a journalist who has been doing administrative functions since then, that's what I am."

"Do you know who Fred Davison is to me?" He scanned her gaze to see what she was reading into it. "He was my mentor in business... Yes, dear Carla, my mentor. My first employer too, and my first enemy. But I think you knew that already, didn't you? That's why you pulled this whole stunt with this Fitzgerald guy?"

"Excuse me?"

"I don't know what you're up to. I suppose you've been in cahoots with that lawyer to get your hands on the fortune Dad hasn't left you, haven't you? Of course, I did. You said, "I'll marry the major shareholder, get the land back, put it up for value, get a divorce, and keep half of it all." Is that what you're planning? And you think it's going to come true?"

Carla could not believe so many slanders. She looked at her boss as if he was going crazy right there, under her nose. She had to defend herself, she wanted to, but the urge to cry didn't make the task any easier to perform.

"I may be your employee. May come as a surprise to everyone. I may already be fired for having changed my last name just a little, but I will not allow you to talk to me that way, to try to put words in my mouth, and much less to judge me without knowing me."

"Then tell me why I know you as Carla Davis and not Davison. And why I have suddenly been suggested to be your husband in exchange for obtaining a company that I inherited not even how or why, since Fred and I made each other's lives miserable in the battle for that same land that he has now wanted to give to me. It's just... it's madness!"

"That man is not my father!"

"What are you saying now, Carla?"

"Yes, he is. He is! Damn it, he is. He is by blood, but I've only met him once in my life, once in person." Max stood still, attentive to her words. "I found out yesterday about his death in the strangest way, and in the night I get that folder that looks like an entire thesis on how to fuck up Carla Davis' life in a second."

The silence returned, but she broke it moments later.

"I want to understand what is going on. I want to understand why I have inherited the actions of a man whose the only thing he did with my existence in his life was nothing. Nothing! He left my mother and me helpless for a woman, for the same woman who created a foundation that now... that now I must run because if I don't do it, I... if I don't do it for sure come to fined. And what do I know about money, fines, and laws? What do I know about all this, when I had a simple life full of lacks on all sides?"

Max didn't move a muscle, listening to her.

She approached him, carried away by the pain of memories, the weight of injustice, and the rage of not knowing what to do.

"Mr. Bastidas, I don't even have a legal defense, I don't have the means to pay for it. I have nothing, and no one who can advise me, because I don't want to accept this farce, this circus in bad taste that this man has invented, I don't know for what purpose."

She walked away from him towards the exit doors, leaving him unsettled and angry.

"We haven't finished talking," he said softly.

"I'm sorry for disobeying, Mr. Bastidas, but I have to leave, I can't stay here another minute." She swallowed the dryness in her throat and exhaled, stressed and hurt. "Rest assured that if I can't give up that absurd inheritance, it will be all yours. I will not run the foundation of the woman who prevented me from having a united family, much less indulge my father's eccentric whims by marrying a man I don't love."

She turned away and left Max alone in the boardroom.

It had been a gloomy day for Carla, but what no one knew was that before, weeks before, even. She had already begun to deal with something strong and terrifying all alone.