If Audrey ever enters into a joint commercial venture with a co-owner, particularly a legal spouse, the incorporation documents shall explicitly include a material breach of fiduciary duty clause, triggering automatic buyback rights at base book value. This provision is absolutely non-negotiable. Legal fees for said incorporation have been prepaid from this trust.
When we formally incorporated the restaurant group in 2021, my lawyer embedded the clause. Gavin had read Section 8.3 twice. He had scoffed, asking if I truly distrusted him. I told him it was Josephine’s dying condition, paid for by her estate. He took the 25% minority equity and signed the line. He never mentioned it again.
Now, sitting in the dim kitchen, Evelyn slid a thick, heavy kraft envelope across the walnut block. There was a small, precise pencil mark in the upper right corner: March 12, 2026.
“I have been holding this file in my safe for exactly six weeks, Audrey,” Evelyn whispered, her eyes tracking my hands. “Read it when you are in a secure headspace. But please know, you are not isolated in this. Not with me.”
Before I cracked the wax seal on the envelope, my brain instinctively walked backward, surveying the wreckage of the preceding year….
