CHAPTER FOUR
743 Words
Silence.
Arabella’s fingers stopped against the edge of the desk.
Julian didn’t make a joke.
That, more than anything, sharpened her attention.
She took the document back from him.
“Devereaux bought one of our main suppliers and suspended our deliveries the moment the transfer closed?”
“Yes.”
“Unless we accept twenty-six percent.”
“Yes.”
Arabella looked down at the notice.
No explanation.
No apology.
Just revised terms and a number large enough to hurt.
Her hand moved toward her phone.
“No,” her father said.
She looked up.
“I haven’t done anything.”
“You were about to.”
“I was calling operations.”
“You were angry and reaching for a phone. The distinction is academic.”
Arabella slipped it back into her bag.
“I’m not angry.”
Julian glanced at the notice in her hand.
She followed his gaze.
The corner had crumpled between her fingers.
Arabella flattened it against the desk.
“There.”
Julian wisely kept his mouth shut.
“How bad is it?” she asked.
Their father leaned back.
“Three depots are already on reserve.”
The irritation disappeared.
“How much reserve?”
“One has enough until tomorrow morning.”
“And the others?”
“Less.”
Now the twenty-six percent mattered differently.
It wasn’t a figure on paper.
It was trucks that wouldn’t move.
Shipments that would arrive late.
Clients who would not care which family had caused the problem.
Arabella folded her arms.
“What do we do?”
“For the next hour? Nothing.”
She stared at him.
“They’re running our depots dry.”
“And whoever made this decision knows exactly what that will make us want to do.”
“Respond.”
“Angrily.”
Arabella said nothing.
Her father stood.
Age had silvered his hair. It had done very little to soften him.
“If this were only about twenty-six percent, they wouldn’t have opened by suspending deliveries.”
Julian nodded slowly.
“So this is a message.”
“We don’t know what it is yet.”
“Yet,” Arabella said.
Her father looked at her.
“Yet.”
Julian picked up his phone.
“Do we have another supplier with enough volume?”
“Not one who can replace Calder overnight.”
Arabella frowned.
“You checked?”
“I asked operations before you arrived.”
Their father looked at Julian.
“Get legal onto Calder’s contract. I want every obligation that survived the ownership transfer.”
Julian was already dialing.
Then their father turned to Arabella.
“Replace Calder.”
Something inside her settled.
Finally.
A problem she could put her hands around.
“How much volume?”
“All of it.”
“How fast?”
“Before reserves become empty tanks.”
Arabella opened the supplier directory on her phone. Names, capacities, routes.
She ignored anyone who could not move product by morning and began marking the rest.
By the time Julian ended his call, five suppliers remained.
Five was not a solution, but it was movement.
If Calder wanted panic, they would get paperwork, phone calls and a replacement plan instead.
She did not call any of them yet.
Her father had told her to wait an hour, and she would.
But waiting did not mean sitting still.
It meant being ready when the hour ended.
She locked the screen and slid the phone back into her bag.
The anger was still there.
Now it had somewhere useful to go.
Arabella picked up the Calder notice and her folder.
At the bottom of the page sat the new owner’s name.
Devereaux Energy Group.
She stared at it.
She had heard the name her entire life.
At dinners.
Behind closed doors.
In conversations that stopped when children entered rooms.
Never warmly.
Never casually.
But she wasn’t interested in old stories right now.
She was interested in three depots running out of fuel.
“Do you think they bought Calder because of us?”
Her father’s expression gave her nothing.
“I don’t know.”
Julian paused with the phone against his ear.
Arabella looked between them.
“Then what do they want?”
“That doesn’t matter yet. Replace Calder.”
Arabella tightened her grip on the folder.
“And if I can’t?”
Her father met her eyes.
“Then we find out what Devereaux actually wants.”
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