My Husband's Company Was Bought With My Dowry
by Ava Sterling
My name badge at the company's eighth-anniversary dinner said GUEST. Ten days later I found the wire that founded it: four million dollars of my dowry, sent eight days before our wedding, booked in his name.
For eight years my husband told the same story from a stage. Eleven thousand dollars, a rented van, four hundred yards of Belgian flax, and a corner by the register in the eighth store. Ninety-six people applauded it at our anniversary dinner. My name badge that night said GUEST. I chose the color. I built the candle out of my grandmother's kitchen and named it after her. I put the hand-rolled hem on every napkin we sell. When the new investors drew the org chart, they gave my husband the commercial side of the house and gave me what they called the decorative side. Then they printed a title for me in a press release. Founding Muse. They wrote my quote for me too. I would have kept smiling. I had been smiling for eight years. But an auditor rebuilding the cap table needed a source-of-funds letter for one wire he couldn't place: four million dollars into Merrow House LLC on September seventh, 2018, eight days before I was married, out of my father's holding company, one word in the memo line. Proika. It means dowry. Ten days later that money appears in the ledger as my husband's own capital contribution, and my grandmother tells me on the phone what my father believed until the day he died: that I own forty percent of it. They want my signature before the round closes Friday. What do they think I am going to do with the pen?
Start chapter 13 of 6 chapters are free to read here.