He answered on the first ring.

“Did she call you?” he asked, his voice low and urgent.

“Yes,” I said. “She took the phone from Dad.”

“She’s out of her mind, Sarah,” Derek said. “I just looked at the transfer request that hit our admin portal.”

“How did she even get Peter to agree to this?” I asked.

“She went through his broker,” Derek said. “She offered him a premium that was twenty percent above our current Series A share price.”

“With our family’s trust money,” I said.

“With all of it,” Derek said. “Dad tried to stop her, but her name is the sole signature on the liquid account.”

I started walking down the sidewalk, my boots clicking against the concrete.

The late afternoon sun was slipping behind the Santa Cruz mountains, casting long shadows across the Stanford campus in the distance.

“She wants to be listed as our chief advisor in the local paper,” I said.

“I know,” Derek said. “She already emailed our PR firm asking for our official brand guidelines.”

“She did what?” I asked, stopping in my tracks.