Chapter 16 - The Old Phone
Inside the CHARLES folder were screenshots of messages my father had sent over six years.
Some were intercepted emails.
Others were photographs of letters before Ryan hid them.
Then we found something even more important.
A backup of my old phone.
I had believed it was destroyed when I dropped it in our pool six years earlier.
Ryan had retrieved the cloud data before replacing it.
The backup contained voicemails I had never heard.
Dad’s voice filled the room.
“Emily, I did not send that email.”
Another.
“Please call me before you make any decision.”
Another.
“I am not asking you to leave Ryan.”
Then one final voicemail.
“If you want me out of your life, I will respect that.”
“But please hear this from me, not from someone speaking for me.”
I covered my mouth.
Dad looked away.
Then Naomi found the access history.
Ryan had logged into my cloud account the same afternoon those voicemails arrived.
He deleted them.
He had not merely allowed an estrangement.
He engineered it.
Naomi copied everything.
Then she found the application Ryan used for the fake video.
Login history showed activity that morning.
The source device matched Lily’s old phone.
Ryan had synced materials through it weeks earlier and forgotten to wipe the cached files.
There was our proof.
At 5:52 p.m., Naomi sent the evidence to the buyer’s counsel.
At 6:07, they replied.
Closing suspended pending identity verification.
For the first time all day, I breathed.
Dad smiled faintly.
“You stopped it.”
“No.”
I looked at Lily.
“She did.”
Lily grinned.
Then my phone rang.
Ryan.
I answered.
“You sabotaged the sale.”
“You forged a video of me.”
Silence.
Then he said, “Do you understand what you’ve done?”
“Yes.”
“I told the truth.”
“You think that makes you powerful?”
“No.”
I looked at Dad.
“It makes me free.”
Ryan’s voice became cold.
“You haven’t won.”
“I know.”
“Tomorrow morning there’s an emergency board meeting.”
“I know that too.”
“I still hold your voting proxy.”
“Not after what we found.”
“You’ll have to prove breach before the vote.”
Naomi shook her head.
Ryan continued.
“And I have enough votes without you.”
Dad raised an eyebrow.
That didn’t sound right.
Ryan laughed softly.
“Ask Thomas.”
Then he hung up.
Thomas had already left.
I called him.
No answer.
Naomi opened the company capitalization records.
She stared at the screen.
Then swore under her breath.
“What?”
She turned the laptop toward us.
Twenty percent of Bennett Development’s voting shares had been transferred that afternoon.
“To whom?”
She zoomed in.
May you like
The name on the receiving entity made my stomach drop.
Diane Bennett.
