Damon's Plan
Chapter 07 - Damon's Plan
Damon Cole had served as Whitmore Hospitality Group's chief operating officer for nearly six years, a competent, ambitious executive whose partnership with Ethan had, by most external appearances, been genuinely productive right up until the accident had introduced a specific kind of uncertainty into the company's leadership structure.
Clara, moving carefully through her ordinary household duties over the following two weeks, began noticing details she'd previously had no particular reason to track, Damon's visits to the estate growing more frequent, always scheduled during hours when Ethan's physical therapist was present, always accompanied by folders Damon kept carefully angled away from casual observation.
She reported what she noticed to Ethan each evening, in careful, quiet conversations conducted in the study after the rest of the household staff had gone home, Walter present for most of these debriefings, the three of them slowly assembling a picture considerably more disturbing than any of them had initially expected.
"He's meeting with an attorney," Clara reported, three weeks into her careful observation. "Not the company's usual counsel. Someone new. I overheard him on the phone confirming an appointment for what he called, quote, the guardianship filing timeline."
Ethan's jaw tightened. "How soon."
"Six weeks," Clara said. "He mentioned needing your updated medical documentation before then, said something about Dr. Ahn's notes being, quote, more favorable to their position than they'd expected."
Walter and Ethan exchanged a look, the specific concern of understanding that Dr. Ahn's carefully worded, technically accurate documentation of "ongoing, inconclusive recovery" was apparently being read by Damon's legal team as evidence supporting exactly the kind of permanent incapacity that would justify a guardianship petition.
"They're planning to file before I've had any reasonable chance to contest it," Ethan said. "Six weeks isn't enough time to build a defense against a legal filing, if I'm supposedly too incapacitated to participate meaningfully in my own case."
"That's precisely the point," Walter said grimly. "A guardianship petition, filed correctly, can move remarkably fast when the petitioner controls both the medical narrative and the target's access to independent legal counsel."
"I need my own attorney," Ethan said. "Someone entirely outside the company, someone Damon has no existing relationship with, and someone I can bring in without anyone connected to Vanessa or Damon learning about it in advance."
Clara, listening to the two men work through the mechanics of the coming legal battle, found herself thinking of something she'd overheard just that morning, a detail she hadn't yet mentioned because she hadn't fully understood its significance until this exact conversation.
"There's something else," she said. "Vanessa mentioned, on the phone with someone I couldn't identify, something about moving up the wedding date. She said, if the guardianship goes through before the wedding, quote, the marital property complications become considerably simpler to manage."
Ethan sat back, the full shape of the conspiracy finally, completely visible.
May you like
"She's planning to marry me," he said slowly, "while I'm legally established as incapacitated, specifically because a spouse's claim to marital assets, combined with a guardianship she and Damon effectively control, would give them nearly unrestricted access to everything I own, with almost no legal recourse available to me at all."
"We need a lawyer," Walter said, "and we need one considerably faster than six weeks."
