Chapter 13 - The Employees
The restructuring hearings moved into operational detail.
Hotels.
Restaurants.
Marinas.
A resort development.
Hundreds of workers.
Some had spent thirty years with Hawthorne.
They did not care about my yacht story.
They cared about paychecks.
Health insurance.
Retirement.
I met employee representatives without Charles present.
One housekeeper named Rosa Delgado asked.
“Are you going to sell us?”
The question hurt.
I answered.
“Some assets may be sold.”
“But not to punish the family.”
“Then why?”
“To make the business able to pay for itself.”
She looked skeptical.
Good.
Employees should not trust a financier because of a speech.
We created an employee advisory committee.
The restructuring monitor approved.
Pension assets moved into independent custody.
Executive bonuses suspended.
The St. Barts acquisition terminated.
The yacht listed for sale.
Eleanor’s lawyers objected.
The judge laughed.
Not literally.
But almost.
Then Rosa found something in hotel payroll.
Employees had been charged unexplained “benefit administration fees.”
Small amounts.
Twenty dollars.
Thirty.
Forty.
Across years.
Millions total.
Marcus Bell had routed part to a consulting company.
Another part to Eleanor’s foundation.
The family had not only risked pensions.
They had skimmed wages.
That crossed a different line for me.
We ordered restitution before any creditor distribution to insiders.
Charles called it grandstanding.
I called it arithmetic.
Then the labor department opened its own investigation.
Eleanor’s public charity board resigned.
Her name disappeared from gala invitations.
The social world that once laughed at my stained dress stopped returning her calls.
That was not justice.
But it was consequence.
Then Marcus Bell was arrested in Nassau.
He offered cooperation.
And the first thing he said was.
“Sienna Rowan doesn’t know how close she came to owning a crime scene.”
I stared at the proffer summary.
“What does that mean?”
Marcus explained.
The yacht was not only collateral.
It had been used to host illegal cash transactions tied to public-contract bribery.
May you like
The Richardsons’ debt problem had opened a corruption case much larger than Hawthorne.
