All In (39 page)

56

W
hile David waited for Michel to join him on the stage, he peered out at the room and tried to determine how his talk had been received. He didn't need to look straight at Natalia. He saw her anyway; she was like a ball of energy in the front row.

People shouted questions and he answered them rapid fire. When Gustaf had been on stage, their tone had been humble. The shareholders had such unbelievable respect for Gustaf, and no one dared oppose him, here or in any other context. That was the type of treatment Gustaf was used to.

For David it was different.

Questions rattled in from the audience pretty much nonstop, some hostile, some curious, but they seemed never-ending. After a while, he started wondering if each of the seven hundred onlookers was planning to grill him.

“We'll take two more questions for Mr. Hammar. Then the voting will begin,” the lawyer finally said into the microphone. “Return to your seats.”

The voting would be done using a simplified procedure, which meant that the major stakeholders, those who had the most votes, would be asked first, and they would be asked according to the number of shares they controlled.

Gustaf De la Grip had the most votes. After that came the major funds, and then, in descending order, Åsa, Ebba, Eugene, Alex, Natalia, and finally, last of all, Peter. After that all the small stakeholders present in the room would vote, but by then it would already be decided.

It went as expected to begin with. Gustaf naturally voted for his own board. The fund managers whom David had spoken to and whom he'd won over into his fold voted for him. The ones he had figured would remain loyal to Investum voted against him. Most of them voted the way he'd predicted, with only a few exceptions, but it was close now. He tallied it up in his head. People were still voting, for and against. When it was Åsa Bjelke's turn to vote, she actually appeared to hesitate for a moment. David held his breath. Had they won her over to their side? But in the end she voted against him. Ebba voted for Investum as well. So far it had gone pretty much as planned.

But then their scheme backfired.

When the Russian's turn came, Natalia's uncle Eugene, the man David had spent his summer buttering up, the man David had been convinced was in his pocket, voted
against
. David tried to hide his shock. He glanced at Michel and saw the same reaction in his friend's face.
The Russian has changed sides.

David couldn't help it; he flashed Natalia a look. A faint, cool grin graced her lips. So this was her doing; she'd managed to turn her uncle against Hammar Capital.

He was going to have a long conversation with the Russian about this.

Then it was time for the rest of the owning family. Alexander voted against and Natalia did the same.

It was neck and neck, much closer than he'd anticipated. Had he made a mistake? Had he counted wrong? Their estimates had never—never—predicted that they might fail, not even on a theoretical level. He cast a quick glance at Michel, who looked calm, but David could tell he was worried too.

And Peter De la Grip hadn't even voted yet.

It was surreal.

David wasn't looking at anything; he could hardly see at all. He clenched his fists tight in his trouser pockets. They were in the lead, but not by much of a margin. And Peter owned A-shares, which were weighted ten times as much as the B-shares that most shareholders owned. It was the traditional Swedish system, often criticized, expressly designed to give the owning family more power. That was why it would have made all the difference to win over one or more members of the owning family. Now it looked like Hammar Capital was going to stumble at the finishing line.

All these years and everything he'd put into this.

For nothing.

He'd sacrificed everything, even the woman he was starting to suspect he was in love with—for failure, a fiasco.

David imagined Michel standing there making the same computations he was making and reaching the same conclusions.

“It's close,” Michel said quietly, hardly audibly. “It's so close.”

“Do we know how many shares he actually owns?” David asked. It was down to a percentage point or two now. “I mean exactly?”

“It's in our paperwork somewhere,” Michel said. He leaned toward David, speaking in a whisper. “Plus he could have bought a ton of B-shares on his own. He is rich, after all. And it's possible that he got hold of more A-shares, even though we did our best to vacuum them up. I don't know the exact percentage of A-shares.” Michel scratched the back of his scalp. “What happened with the Russian? I thought we had him.”

“I thought so too,” David replied neutrally. Would the small stakeholders be able to save them?

Peter voted.

The count flickered up.

They watched tensely. The room waited with bated breath.

What the hell?

David didn't dare breathe.

“What happened?” Michel blurted out. “There must be some kind of mistake.”

A murmur spread through the room.

David could hardly believe his eyes, because that must be a mistake, couldn't possibly be right.

The murmur increased. Someone yelled.

And then the room erupted.

So many flashbulbs went off that David was temporarily blinded. Next to him Michel swore loudly and emotionally in Arabic.

Peter De la Grip had definitely decided the vote.

But in favor of Hammar Capital.

Peter De la Grip, their archenemy and opponent, had voted
for
Hammar Capital's plan and against Investum. He had voted against his father, his board.

It was over.

Hammar Capital had won, and the old Investum didn't exist anymore. The board would be forced to resign effective immediately.

Michel looked him in the eye. They couldn't quite fathom what had just happened.

“I can confirm that Hammar Capital's seven incoming board members already have enough votes. No one else can beat them,” the lawyer said loudly. “The shareholders' meeting thereby declares that the majority of the votes was received by the following people,” he continued, listing off David, Michel, and the five other people the two of them had selected together, three women and two men.

“These individuals have thus been elected as the new board of directors. I thank the shareholders.”

The last bit could hardly be heard. The level of noise in the room rose, and then a few people started clapping their hands, and the applause spread quickly, increasing to a thunderous volume.

“We won!” Michel yelled over the applause and shouting. The shock in his face started to give way and was replaced by a broad grin instead. “We
won
!”

David nodded, and an enormous wave of relief rushed through him, the emotion almost unreal. He vigorously shook the hand Michel held out, up and down. The normally staid Malin flung her arms around David's neck with a squawk of joy, and he hugged her so hard she gasped for breath, laughing all the while. People flocked to the podium to take pictures, offer congratulations, and participate in the chaos. And David did everything he was expected to do while he tried to shake off the surreal feeling.

Hammar Capital had taken over and destroyed Investum.

They had made financial history, redrawn the financial map. This would be written into textbooks and articles forever after. Economics historians would study this event, and write theses and dissertations about it. It was extraordinary.

David looked around, listening to the cheers and thinking that if this had been a TV show, confetti would be fluttering down from the ceiling. The cheers came and went. People were still laughing, and he thought he ought to feel happy too.

But he didn't feel happy. The relief had vanished, leaving nothing in its place, and he felt totally shut down.

He kept shaking hands with the men and women who surged forward from every direction, letting himself be thumped on the back and congratulated. And he tried to persuade himself that this weird feeling would pass soon.

57

N
atalia watched David smiling and shaking hands up on the stage. He was overwhelming, like a king or emperor.

And it was over.

Everything was over. Everything had changed.

Her thoughts were racing.

Peter . . . What had actually happened? Had something in his brain snapped? It was inconceivable—literally impossible to comprehend. She looked around for her brother, but didn't see him.

Gustaf was standing with some of the board members—well, former board members—gesticulating with short, tense hand motions.

Her mother sat with her hands clasped in her lap, and Natalia thought she ought to go over to her, offer some comfort, but she didn't dare. Louise rocked back and forth in her seat, blowing her nose over and over again. Alexander sat leaning back, with his legs stretched out as far as he could and his arms along the chair backs. He wasn't looking at anyone or talking to anyone. He mostly looked bored, as if the chaos around him didn't have the least thing to do with him. Uncle Eugene sat next to her mother, patting her clumsily on the shoulder.

Natalia looked at the wreckage of her family.

How
dare
Peter do this to them, to Mother and to his own wife? Why had he done it? Did this have something to do with Carolina? Natalia didn't know what to think, just knew that he'd destroyed his own future. Gustaf would never forgive him. Their mother wouldn't either. And Louise? Natalia looked at her sister-in-law's red, tear-stained face. Louise had married Investum's crown prince, a man who owned a grand estate and was welcomed into the most exclusive circles. Somehow Natalia doubted that Louise would stand by Peter's side now.

And then it
finally
thundered in. Like a late train at full speed in rush hour traffic: the rage against David as he stood up there on the stage like God's gift to humanity, the man who had betrayed her and destroyed her family like some dictator.

This takeover didn't have anything to do with
justice
, she thought furiously. It wasn't about anything other than revenge and power. David hadn't acquired a company; he'd massacred it. People would lose their jobs because of this. The value that had been built up over generations would be sold off.

She rubbed her forehead, already feeling her anger waning, feeling how quickly her strength was running out. She was so done. The last few weeks had drained all her energy, what with everything that had happened, everything that had been written . . . And now she'd lost everything. At least that's how it felt. Outside, the world was probably moving along totally as usual, and she felt an enormous need to get out of here, to get out into the fresh air, to not have to see David and his admirers, how all the women were looking at him with lust in their eyes. Yes, she saw it all, the way they openly stared at him, the leader of the pack, the alpha male, the victor.

She had to get out, away from this room where all her mistakes were gathered in one place, like some exposé of everything she'd done wrong.

Åsa waved to her, but Natalia couldn't do any more than nod weakly back and look away. More than anything else she wanted to go home, but the chaos and the commotion in the room were so overpowering that she just sat there. It would take ages to squeeze her way out, and she wasn't up to it.

She collapsed in her chair.

“Natalia, come!” She jumped and looked up. Her father had barked the order, short and firm. “We're going to meet with them,” he said. “We have to save what can be saved now.”

“But I . . . ,” Natalia began uncertainly. She'd never been involved in the business before, why now?

“Hammar wants you there,” Gustaf said in a tone that conveyed extremely well what he thought about that. “Come, now.”

Technically no one could force her to go. She didn't answer to anyone. In the end, however, it was less trouble to obey. Natalia got up. Would this ever be over?

58

P
eter squirmed. The conference room he and David Hammar were in had big windows, and the water was practically below their feet. David was standing by the window, his back to Lake Mälaren behind him, watching Peter with his arms crossed and a frosty stare.

It felt surreal to be in here, just the two of them. Peter was unbelievably uncomfortable, despite having been the one to request the meeting. He and David hadn't spoken one-to-one since they were teenagers. And even then they hadn't actually ever really talked. They had fought and argued from the first day David started at Skogbacka.

“I know there isn't actually anything I can say to make up for what I did,” Peter began. He was forced to speak loudly because the room was long and David didn't approach him, but remained by the window. Peter cleared his throat and steeled himself, but he still couldn't look David in the eye. It took all his courage just to dare to be here, to dare to speak. He couldn't actually look at the man he'd injured so badly.

Peter wondered if he could explain what had happened even to himself: the frustration he'd felt long before he'd ever begun at Skogbacka, the incessant feeling of not being good enough, the jealousy that was so all-encompassing, and, the most shameful of all, the attraction he'd felt for Carolina Hammar. He'd thought she was so pretty, the blond fifteen-year-old with the cheerfully colored clothes and the friendly smile, the working-class girl. She'd been nice to him, and they'd talked to each other a few times, completely harmlessly. It had been like a respite, an oasis. And then people had found out that Peter De la Grip was interested in David Hammar's weird sister. They'd teased him, and he'd felt ridiculed, so he'd done the worst thing you could do to another person. He and three buddies had gone by her house, had seen her in the window, had rung the bell. It wasn't planned, it just happened, and it was revolting. Not a day had gone by since then that he hadn't been ashamed, hadn't known, to his very core, that he was the lowest of the low.

“But I needed to say that I'm sorry, and I'm grateful that you were willing to meet with me,” he said in a half-choked voice. When he'd been told that Carolina had died . . . Her “death,” oh God, it had almost
destroyed
him. And now: she was alive. It was like getting a second chance. He felt such gratitude.

“I'm so tremendously sorry for what I did to you and to Carolina,” he said a little more loudly. “That's why I voted for you and Hammar Capital in there.” He stopped. The words were completely insufficient. “I understand that there's nothing I can say that would make up for what happened. And I don't know what I would have done if I were in your shoes.”

David was still standing at the window. He turned away, looking out at the water. His arms were still crossed. The late-afternoon sunlight streamed in, making dust motes visible in the air. Silence swelled between them.

Peter ran his hand over his forehead. He was so tired, so drained after this day—first, the meeting with his siblings at Natalia's place, and then the tension on the way to the Grand Hôtel, and then the meeting with Carolina. It had been like turning back time. She'd been so like herself, and yet different. Colorful and blond, but grown-up and serious. The conversation in the hotel suite was something he would carry with him for the rest of his life. It still felt like a glowing dream. And then the meeting, of course, where for the first time ever—and very publicly, no less—he had opposed his father and thereby also buried his own future in the world of Swedish business.

He looked at David's back. He didn't know what he'd hoped to get out of this meeting. Forgiveness? He didn't deserve forgiveness, but Caro had forgiven him anyway, and that had been like getting a new life. He'd confessed and his sins were forgiven.

“I talked to Carolina,” he said to David's back.

David abruptly turned around. “You
saw
her?” he asked incredulously.

Peter nodded.

“When?” David took a step toward him, and it was like facing a menacing tiger or an attacking lion.

Peter was having a hard time breathing. “We've had you both under surveillance,” he replied and forced himself not to back away even though it was like forcing himself to stand face-to-face with a dangerous predator who was preparing to attack. “I knew where she was staying, so I went there.”

“What did you say to her?” David asked, taking another step closer to Peter. Peter tried to keep his fear at bay, but it was hard. David Hammar was not a teenage underdog anymore. He was a powerful, full-grown man. There was nothing, literally nothing preventing him from beating the crap out of Peter right here. Peter glanced around at the walls and ceiling of the conference room and noted that they even looked soundproof.

“If you did anything to her . . . ,” David began. He didn't need to say any more. Peter realized that David was hardly one to make empty threats. There was nothing civilized about this man, just a thin patina of decorum, beneath which he was completely ruthless except to those he cared about. And Peter had never had any doubt that David really cared about his sister.

He was the big brother Peter himself had never been able to be to his siblings.

Peter held up his hand. “I went there to apologize to Carolina. I'd called her beforehand and she let me come. We just talked.”

“What did she say?”

“She said that she'd forgiven me a long time ago, which obviously I had no right at all to expect. I hadn't even hoped for that.” Peter's voice broke, and he struggled not to let his feelings show on his face. If he started crying in front of David Hammar, he would die of shame. “There's nothing I can say to make up for what I did,” he continued. “Nothing, I know that. But I still wanted to see her and apologize.”

David didn't say anything, but the worst of the tension in his face began to abate.

“Carolina is okay,” Peter said.

“I know,” David said. “I talked to her by phone just a little while ago. But she didn't say a word about your meeting.”

Peter shrugged. In his eyes, Carolina was a grown woman, not accountable to David, but he wasn't so foolish as to mention that.

David eyed him for a long time. It felt as if he were entering Peter's head and rooting around in there, and it was the most uncomfortable thing Peter had experienced in his whole life.

“You raped my little sister,” he said finally.

Peter gasped for breath, but he replied, “Yes.”

“You and your buddies whipped me like an animal.”

“Yes.”

David looked away. Peter waited.

There was a knock on the door. “The others are coming in now,” David said. “Are you going to stick around?”

Peter shook his head. “I'm leaving. There'll be enough drama without my father trying to murder me.” He hesitated. For a second it had felt as if David had seen him, really seen the man he was trying to be, but he wasn't totally sure. He held out his hand. “Good luck,” he said.

David glanced at the outstretched hand for so long that Peter was convinced he was going to refuse to take it. There was another knock. David sighed and finally held out his own hand. Gratitude suffused Peter as they shook hands—not all that warmly, but still.

David quickly pulled his hand back, nodded briefly, and said, “Thanks for your vote earlier.” Peter could hear that David wasn't completely comfortable saying the words.

“Thanks yourself,” Peter said. And he meant it. He was profoundly grateful that he'd had a chance to acknowledge and take responsibility for his crimes, even if the statute of limitations had run out from a legal perspective, grateful that he'd been given a chance to move on, wherever he was headed now after this. He put his hand on the doorknob and opened it. Michel Chamoun was standing outside. Michel looked at Peter without saying a word and then looked at David with an eyebrow raised. The terrifying man who was in charge of Hammar Capital's security stood outside like a colossus.

“Should I stall them?” Michel asked.

“No, we're done here,” David said as Gustaf De la Grip's voice cut through the air.

Peter steeled himself before meeting his father. He'd managed to avoid him directly after the vote, and he assumed his father's mood hadn't improved since then.

Gustaf spotted him and glared at him furiously. “So this is where you've been hiding,” he roared. “What the hell did you do? Are you an idiot?”

Peter cowered in the face of his father's rage, felt the familiar fear, and was ready to be beaten. In some way he regressed, becoming small and vulnerable again in front of all these influential men. Fucking shit.

But then the head of security, dressed all in black, took a step forward. He positioned himself between Peter and Gustaf, slowly shook his head, and addressed Gustaf. “Back off,” he said coldly.

Gustaf, who apparently had rarely if ever been told to back off before, looked as if he couldn't believe his ears. He opened his mouth, surely to tell the man off, and it occurred to Peter that this was the man who'd allowed him to believe that Carolina was dead. His father had robbed him of the opportunity to stand up and atone for what he'd done. But it was over now, and maybe he could start to be free. The past didn't need to control his life anymore. Peter tipped his head and, taking advantage of the tumult Gustaf's reaction had caused, walked away.

The last thing he heard was the head of security saying, “If you care at all about that finger, I'd stop waving it in my face.”

Peter smiled to himself and left.