All In

by Simona Ahrnstedt

  Gustaf came back up onto the stage and made a half-hour-long statement. David and Michel exchanged glances.

  “Now I give the floor to David Hammar,” the lawyer finally said.

  It was time.

  The room went silent.

  The lawyer stared at the rows of seats.

  And then everything went black.

  David walked up onto the stage. The room was pitch-black, yet another of Malin’s dramatic ideas, which had seemed better when she’d first described it than it did now since David could hardly see his own hands in front of him. But he made it up onto the stage without any mishaps and hoped he was standing at the podium and not too close to the edge of the stage.

  And then a single spotlight came on.

  It shone straight on David, and at first the light blinded him—he couldn’t see anything. The audience whispered. He waited as his eyes adjusted to the light and he started to be able to make out shapes in the audience. He spotted Alexander De la Grip, Eugene Tolstoy, and Natalia’s mother.

  Natalia sat straight-backed beside her mother. David felt a wave of emotions that he really couldn’t explore right now. He blinked and gazed out at the enormous room, full of shareholders, taking them all in and letting them look at him.

  A projector came on, and a Twitter stream was projected onto a screen behind him. The tweets, hashtagged #HC and #Investum, rolled by faster and faster, and David had to admit that the effect was impressive. But then Malin had always had a flair for the dramatic.

  A sound technician said into his earpiece, “Go ahead and begin.”

  David took a step forward.

  The lighting technician swept the spotlight over the audience in quick bands of light.

  David spotted Malin, who was standing and watching him nervously from the side. She gave him a brief, encouraging—or maybe it was a warning—nod.

  He nodded to the chairman of the shareholders’ meeting.

  He pushed aside all thoughts of Natalia.

  He took a deep breath.

  So.

  It was time.

  55

  Natalia had arrived late on purpose because she hadn’t wanted to mingle or chat with anyone, especially not her mother, who had greeted her with just a quick nod and then went back to staring straight ahead, which was what she was doing now in the chair next to her.

  Natalia pushed aside the hurt with determination. Actually she shouldn’t have been all that surprised. Her mother normally used silence and emotional distancing to deal with conflict. And there were other crises to cope with at the moment. For example, David, who was standing on stage, his charm almost electric. He was wearing a black suit, a slim dark-gray shirt with no tie, dark cufflinks, and a dark belt that looked expensive under the spotlight. He was so handsome—no, so magnetic—that it hurt the eye. For a brief moment it had felt as if he was looking right at her, but it had happened so quickly that she might have been imagining it. She realized she was holding her breath. And then he began to speak.

  He introduced himself in a loud voice, and little shivers ran over her skin. She knew David from informal settings. Their meetings had been relaxed and private, and that was the David she’d gotten to know. She had never seen him in his role as a self-confident business leader, never suspected how different it would be. Because, oh my God, what an impression he made.

  Natalia literally had goose bumps all over her body. His voice mesmerized the entire auditorium. No one whispered, no one tinkered with their cell phone, no one even fidgeted impatiently in their chair. Everyone sat upright, wide-eyed, and listened as David Hammar told them what he would do if they voted for him and his board. Step by step David went through the shortcomings he and Hammar Capital’s analysts had identified. Unhealthy perks. Incompetent leadership. Bad investments and poor decisions. Undervalued assets. Outrageous compensation packages. Point by point he hacked away at pretty much everything Investum had done in recent years.

  Natalia was almost having difficulty breathing. She hadn’t been involved in any of the abuses he described, and she’d never suspected there were so many irregularities. She didn’t dare look at anyone in the family as she listened to how he thought the subsidiaries should be broken up, how various offices and ineffective divisions should be shut down and the work outsourced.

  And that wasn’t even the worst of it.

  After David had spoken uninterrupted for almost an hour and gone through PowerPoint presentations about how to reorganize—or obliterate—Investum, he moved on to hidden assets that should be realized. There was land to be sold, assets to be auctioned off, things that had been in the family for eons but which were technically owned by the company. Their worth should be realized and their value passed on to the shareholders. She could see the business side of his plan, was able to see how it made sense. But then sense fled.

  “And naturally the family estate, Gyllgarn Castle, northwest of Stockholm, will be sold,” David said from the stage. “It would not be fiscally responsible not to sell it.”

  Gyllgarn, oh my God. Because although the estate had belonged to the De la Grip family for centuries, apparently it was owned now, from a purely technical tax and bookkeeping perspective, by the Investum company. She’d had no idea. Peter and her father must have worked that out together when Peter took over the property. She could picture them—conspiring over the deal. Had her mother known? Had Alexander? Or had they been excluded too? It didn’t matter, because now it would be lost. So stupid.

  She wondered who could even afford to buy it. But David might have it parceled off and sell the woods and the acreage and the furnishings individually. She looked down at her hands on her knee, didn’t want to cry. It was all just stuff. But it hurt her so much, it was like a physical ache.

  David kept going. There was a seemingly endless list of actions that would increase the stock price—if he had his way.

  She kept listening, in a shocked fog, to David outlining in broad brushstrokes what Investum’s future would look like under his leadership. The board would be filled with skilled people. All the improper perks and bonuses would be gotten rid of immediately. Compensation and severance packages would be reviewed and torn up. And so on.

  Natalia was so thirsty she could hardly swallow. Around her the shocked silence slowly started to become an agitated murmur. On the white screen behind David, Twitter screamed about hostile takeovers and megalomania. The level of excitement in the room was tremendous.

  But if Natalia were to be completely honest with herself, this was a sound plan. The business and finance part of her saw that. At the same time, however, David’s plan meant totally destroying a traditional empire. If he won this vote, he would take apart a power hierarchy and disrupt a world order that had lasted for generations. It was almost unbearable. Natalia straightened in her seat. She simply refused to fall apart. This wasn’t over yet. She had a few aces of her own up her sleeve. She was no debutante.

  She had said she would fight.

  And that was exactly what she meant to do.

  56

  While 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.”

  What happened? Natalia happened.

  “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

  Natalia 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 ch
air 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.