He Came Back Running (Maya and Mason) novel Chapter 19

Chapter 19

Mason’s POV

The hospital smelled the way hospitals always did, antiseptic and waiting.

I sat in the consultation room chair and watched Dr. Mercer move the ultrasound wand across Selina’s stomach and heard the heartbeat fill the room with its small, rapid percussion, and I thought about forty- nine percent.

“Strong heartbeat,” Dr. Mercer said. “Excellent development for this stage. Everything looks exactly as it should”

Selina turned her head toward me, looking for something on my face

I gave her what I could.

“Good,” I said.

It wasn’t enough. It was never going to be enough this morning, and she knew it, and the knowledge settled into her expression as something that would require addressing later.

Later was the car ride home.

She waited until we were three minutes from the hospital, which was either restraint or timing, with Selina. it was always timing.

“You haven’t said more than twelve words since we left the penthouse,” she said.

“I’ve been thinking….”

“About Maya,”

Not a question. I didn’t confirm it.

“Our child just had a heartbeat loud enough to fill a room,” she said, “and you sat there looking at the wall.”

“I heard it.”

“Hearing isn’t the same as being present.” Her voice was controlled, which was always more effective from Selina than volume. “I need to know that you’re in this. Not in the boardroom, not in the trust documentation, not in wherever Maya is hiding…. in this. In us…”

I watched the city move past the window.

“The shares are a material threat to everything I’m building,” I said. “Including what I’m building for this child.”

“Don’t use the baby as a leverage point in a corporate argument, Mason. It’s beneath you.”

“I’m not….”

“You’re explaining your distraction using our child as justification.” Her voice dropped. “I won’t be managed. Not by you.” She turned to look at me fully. “I have given up everything for this position. My professional standing. My friendship with Maya. My reputation. I am carrying your heir and living in your

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penthouse and watching you think about another woman every hour of the day”

I looked at her.

“If you can’t prioritize what is sitting in front of you,” she said, “then perhaps the baby and I would be better positioned somewhere you’d notice our absence more acutely.”

The car was quiet.

I knew a calculated ultimatum when I heard one. I had delivered enough of them myself to recognize the architecture… the reasonable grievance, the credible threat, the demand dressed as concern. Selina was good at this. She had always been good at this.

But underneath the calculation was something that wasn’t entirely performance, and that was the part that worked on me.

“Nobody is going anywhere,” I said.

“Then act like it.”

I looked at her. She held my gaze without flinching… chin lifted, eyes direct, one hand resting on her

stomach.

“The forty–nine percent is a genuine threat,” I said. “Not to us. To the company. If Maya activates that. trust before I can find a legal counter, she walks into a shareholders‘ meeting with the ability to block, redirect, or fracture every major resolution I file. Everything I’ve built, everything our child inherits…. becomes contingent on her cooperation.” I paused. “I need you to understand why I can’t stop thinking

about it.”

Selina was quiet for a moment.

“Then stop thinking about it,” she said, “and start doing something about it.” Her voice shifted, less grievance, more precision. The mode I found genuinely useful. “You’ve been waiting for your lawyers to find a solution. They won’t find one. The trust is clean and you know it. Which means the only solution is Maya herself.” She met my eyes. “Find her. Not to threaten her. Not to send people to locations in the dark. To offer her something she actually wants.”

“She doesn’t want anything from me…”

“She wanted you for eight years,” Selina said flatly. “People don’t stop wanting things that cleanly. They redirect.” She turned back to the window as the car pulled up to the house. “Find what she’s redirected to. And make sure you can give her more of it than whoever she’s with.”

She got out without waiting for a response.

I dropped her at the door and told the driver to take me to the office.

I spent the car ride on the phone.

“I want the search teams doubled,” I told Crane. “Pull in outside contractors if you need to. Budget isn’t the constraint. ” I watched the city pass. “Whoever finds her first gets a hundred thousand. Confirmed location, verifiable, reported to me before any approach. A hundred thousand”

“Understood.” A pause. “And the previous instruction?”

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standing,” I said. “But location first. Nothing moves without my confirmation.”

I hung up and opened Reeves’s thread.

Status of the legal options?

His reply came in forty seconds, which meant he’d been waiting for the message.

Reviewed by four firms. Trust instrument is clean across all relevant jurisdictions. The only path to invalidation would be a fraud claim against the original transfer intent to defeat a future creditor. Timeline makes this extremely difficult to establish. Edwin Hargrove transferred those shares eleven years ago. No court will accept that he was anticipating a divorce that hadn’t happened yet.

I read it twice.

Other options?

A supermajority board resolution could theoretically alter voting rights structure before the trust activates. Would require seventy percent of current board. Risky. If challenged, it likely fails and hands her additional legal grounds. I would not recommend.

I put the phone face down on the seat.

Four firms. Four different sets of expensive legal minds and they had all arrived at the same answer: the only person with access to that trust was Maya.

The only door into the forty–nine percent was a woman I had spent eight years not knowing, who had walked out of my building without looking back and sent me a four–word note and a ring.

I pressed two fingers to the bridge of my nose and thought about what Selina had said.

Find what she’s redirected to.

The office was quieter in the afternoon, the particular stillness of a building that was performing normalcy while everyone in it was aware that something had shifted at the top. I could feel it as I moved through the executive floor. The slightly longer eye contact from people who didn’t usually hold it. The conversations that resumed a half–second after I passed.

They’d heard about the trust. Not the details…. Reeves had kept those contained, but the shape of it. A corporate building has its own nervous system, and mine was registering a disruption.

I sat at my desk and opened the shareholder register.

Forty–nine percent.

I had looked at this number for eight years and seen my father–in–law’s dormant legacy stake historical artifact of the merger, manageable, unthreatening. I had never once considered that it had been actively structured against me. That Edwin Hargrove had sat across my dinner table and shaken my hand at my own wedding and spent the following years building a mechanism that would make his daughter untouchable.

He had been smarter than I gave him credit for.

She was smarter than I gave her credit for.

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My phone rang.

Board line. Direct.

I picked up. “Hargrove….”

“Mason.” Gerald Fitch’s voice, senior independent director, sixty–eight, had been on the board since my father’s tenure. Careful man. Not easily moved. The fact that he was calling the direct line rather than requesting a meeting told me something. “We need to speak.”

“Go ahead.”

“There are concerns among several board members regarding the shareholder register review.” His tone was measured, deliberate. “Specifically, the trust structure that was flagged in the recent audit. There’s an understanding that these holdings represent a significant undisclosed concentration of power, and that the current situation….” He paused. “The board requires clarity on the company’s exposure.”

I kept my voice even. “The trust is a pre–existing instrument. It predates any current governance structure.”

“Which is precisely the concern. A forty–nine percent position that exists outside normal disclosure protocols, held in a trust whose beneficiary status has not been formally confirmed to the board, represents a material risk.” Another pause. “There are questions about leadership stability. About whether the company’s strategic direction can be maintained if this position is activated against current management..

Against current management.

“The board’s confidence in my leadership,” I said carefully, “shouldn’t be contingent on a historical trust

instrument.”

“Mason.” His voice was gentle in the way that preceded something that wasn’t. “Several members have also noted that the individual involved, the trust’s beneficiary…. built a significant portion of the assets under current review during her time with the company. There is a feeling that the situation requires careful handling.” A pause. “We would like a full briefing. Before end of week.”

I sat very still.

“You’ll have it,” I said.

“Thank you.” He hesitated. “Mason…. find a resolution. This is the kind of situation that doesn’t improve with time.”

The call ended.

I set the phone on the desk and looked at the harbour through the floor–to–ceiling glass. Grey, still, flat.

The board had always answered to me.

Until this morning, apparently, they had questions.