Page 19 of Oleander

No one answered immediately. Hollis mistook the silence for retreat. He poured again, slower now, and listened to the yacht nose through the channel. The marina lights slid past the windows. Each passing mast seemed to bow.

“You are right about one thing. We took the dividends. That is why I am selling tonight and placing the proceeds in escrow pending the claims. You can call it guilt if you like. I call it refusing to take another dollar,” said Peter.

“How theatrical.” Hollis smiled toward the inactive camera. “Dorothy would have adored that sentence. She liked morality best when there was an audience.”

“Dorothy is not on this call,” Lila said. “You are.”

Hollis jabbed the camera control. His image appeared without warning. For a moment, the shareholders saw him too close, his face pale in the screen’s light, the expensive room looming behind him. He stepped back and arranged himself beside the onyx bar.

“There,” he said. “Happy? You wanted Hollis Burton in person. Here he is.” Evelyn studied the room behind him.

“Is that the company yacht?”

“It is my yacht.”

“Your distinction is becoming the government’s problem,” she said. “Counsel found invoices routed through Platform Nine’s maintenance budget. New navigation array. Italian upholstery. Replacement tender.”

“Hospitality expenses.”

“Charged while the platform’s firewater pumps waited for replacement seals.”

Hollis’s face changed by a degree. It was enough. One by one, the shareholders looked away from him and toward their other screens.

“Those seals were ordered,” he said.

“After Dorothy escalated them,” Peter replied.

“Because she over-specified everything. She believed every bolt had to survive the end of the world.”

“Apparently not every bolt did,” Calvin said.

The yacht cleared the breakwater. The first open-water swell lifted the bow and set the bottles clicking again. Hollis reached for the back of a chair. Onscreen, no one mentioned that he had done so.

Evelyn folded her hands.

“We have six signatures for an emergency meeting to suspend you as chief executive.”

“You need eight.”

Two shareholders who had not spoken raised their hands to their cameras. Hollis recognized Nathan Bell by the cuffs of his shirt and Merle Donahue by the abstract painting behind her. He had hosted both of them on the yacht. Nathan had slept off champagne in the forward cabin. Merle had asked whether the marble in the primary bath was real.

“Eight,” Evelyn said.

Hollis laughed, but the sound arrived late.

“You cannot convene while unloading your positions. Check the bylaws.”

“We did,” Nathan said. “The transfer is not complete until settlement. We remain shareholders long enough to remove you.”

Hollis stepped closer to the camera.

“I know what each of you owes. I know which loans carry personal guarantees. I know which sons have consulting agreements and which daughters sit on foundation boards. Do not pretend your hands are clean while you reach for the exits.”

“That sounded like a threat,” Merle said.

“It was an inventory.”

“Recorded inventory,” Evelyn said. “The entire call is being preserved.”