Chapter 10 - The Phantom Heir
I froze in the doorway, staring at the black velvet box resting on my white sheets.
Carter had locked down this house entirely; no one could have bypassed the laser grid and biometric sensors.
I approached the bed slowly, a familiar, icy dread creeping back into my veins.
My hand trembled slightly as I lifted the heavy velvet lid.
Inside the box rested a severed, decaying human finger.
Wrapped around the pale flesh was a massive gold signet ring engraved with a roaring lion.
I stopped breathing completely.
It was my father’s ring, the exact one he had supposedly been wearing when his private plane crashed into the ocean ten years ago.
Beneath the gruesome artifact was a handwritten note on expensive, watermarked stationary.
I recognized the elegant, sweeping cursive handwriting immediately, and my blood turned completely to ice.
The note read: "Marcus and Nicole were just the accountants, did you really think you built this empire on your own?"
I dropped the paper as if it had burned my skin.
The letter continued: "I let you play CEO for a decade, but it is time to return the throne to the rightful heir."
"See you at the reading of the real will tomorrow morning, little sister."
My father didn't have any other children.
He had always told me I was his sole heir, his only family, and his greatest legacy.
But the handwriting on the note belonged to a woman named Cassandra.
She was the ruthless, brilliant daughter of my father's greatest corporate rival, a woman who had supposedly died in a mental asylum fifteen years ago.
The realization hit me with the force of a freight train.
The entire conspiracy today wasn't about Brandon's greed or Marcus's embezzlement.
It was a distraction, a carefully orchestrated stress test designed to force me to transfer my assets out of the secure family trust and into the open market.
And I had just done exactly that by shifting my funds to block Marcus's hack.
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My phone screen suddenly lit up with a notification from my offshore bank.
A biometric voice print perfectly matching my dead father’s voice had just authorized the complete liquidation of my entire three-billion-dollar fortune.
