Adrian’s face crumpled.
“I just signed what Mother gave me! I didn’t know! I swear, Elena, I didn’t know any of it!”
Vivian turned and glared at her son. Even in handcuffs.
“Don’t you dare be weak, Adrian.”
“You went to every single finance meeting,” I said to him. “Every one. Your initials are next to every altered projection. In your own handwriting.”
Daniel Cho opened a slim folder.
“Also,” he said, “there are recordings.”
Adrian went completely white.
Three weeks before the wedding, I’d questioned Adrian about a strange payment. Two hundred thousand dollars to a construction company in Myrtle Beach that didn’t seem to exist.
He told me he’d look into it.
That night, he met his mother in the library of the Blackwood mansion.
The Blackwood home security system records audio in every common room. Vivian had it installed years ago. To keep an eye on the household staff.
The recording was on the shared drive. Automatically backed up. Right next to the PowerPoint slides Adrian asked me to fix.
Daniel connected his laptop to the sound system.
And Adrian’s voice came booming out of the speakers across that whole marble terrace.
“She’s asking questions, Mother. About the Myrtle Beach payment.”
Then Vivian’s voice.
“Then marry her faster. Once she’s your wife, we get access to her trust. That little inheritance from her grandmother. Get her to sign it over before the Meridian loans close.”
Adrian again.
“And then what?”
“And then you divorce her, darling. Quietly. It’ll be fine.”
There was a pause on the recording. Somebody poured a drink.
Then Adrian’s voice.
“Once she signs, she can go back to her little parents in their little apartment.”
And Vivian laughing.
“Not before the honeymoon, sweetheart. Keep her cooperative.”
My mother put both hands over her mouth.
My father’s face went gray. He suddenly looked ten years older.
I reached over and switched off the laptop.
“That’s enough,” I said quietly.
That trust they were talking about. My “little inheritance.”
It wasn’t from my grandmother.
It was the Vale family trust. It held the controlling voting shares of Vale Capital. Worth just over four billion dollars.
They’d planned to use me.
And they’d recorded themselves planning it.
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