Chapter 10 - The Foundation
I stared at Vance in pure disbelief as the reality of the situation washed over me.
The hard drive Brandon handed me on the stairs was nothing but a useless decoy.
My fifty million dollars and the controlling shares of my company were still missing.
I demanded Vance pull the vehicle over immediately.
I jumped out into the rain and sprinted back toward the police cruisers where they were holding Amber.
I grabbed the collar of her ruined designer jacket and demanded to know where the real drive was.
Amber laughed a manic, broken laugh.
She confessed that she had mailed the real hard drive to a secure post office box in Switzerland yesterday morning.
She knew the cartel was too dangerous to trust, so she had planned to betray Hector and Brandon all along.
Vance quickly contacted Interpol and had the Swiss authorities seize the package before it could be delivered.
Within forty-eight hours, every single penny of my massive fortune was safely returned to my Houston accounts.
The federal prosecutors built an airtight RICO case against Brandon, Amber, Marcus, and Hector.
They were all denied bail and sentenced to decades in a maximum-security federal penitentiary.
The River Oaks mansion was officially sold to a new, legitimate family, and I donated the proceeds to a local charity.
I finally returned to my peaceful, quiet life, running my construction empire with Big John by my side.
I felt completely secure, knowing my legacy was safe and the toxic elements of my past were permanently removed.
Six months later, I was sitting on the wooden porch of my ranch house, drinking black coffee and watching the sunset.
The Texas breeze was warm, and for the first time in years, my heart felt completely at peace.
I watched the mail carrier drop a small stack of envelopes into my rural mailbox at the end of the driveway.
I walked down, retrieved the mail, and noticed a plain white envelope with no return address.
I opened it carefully and pulled out a single, handwritten letter heavily stamped by the federal prison system.
It was a letter from Amber, written in frantic, jagged handwriting from her jail cell.
"I always hated you, Franklin, but you deserve to know the truth before he finds you," the letter began.
May you like
"Brandon was never your biological son, your late wife lied to you about the paternity thirty years ago."
"The real father is out of prison now, he knows you have the fifty million, and he's already in Houston."
