Chapter 11 - Thomas’s Daughter
Grace returned home under security.
She resented every guard.
Every camera.
Every black SUV following her.
But two hours later, someone shot through her apartment window.
The bullet struck the wall inches from where she had been standing.
Adrian moved Grace and Helen into a protected suite at the Grand Aurelia.
Grace refused at first.
Then she saw her mother trembling.
She agreed.
Adrian placed guards at every entrance.
“You’re not leaving alone.”
Grace looked at him.
“You say that like you’re my boss.”
“I technically am.”
“I quit.”
Adrian blinked.
“What?”
“I’m no longer your employee.”
“This is your resignation?”
“Yes.”
“During an assassination attempt?”
“I have terrible timing.”
Despite everything, Adrian laughed.
It lasted only a second.
Then the distance between them changed.
Not romance.
Not yet.
Trust.
Two people who had inherited the wreckage created by their parents.
They spent the afternoon studying Thomas’s surviving documents.
One sheet contained a series of numbers.
Grace recognized them.
“They’re electrical panel numbers.”
Adrian looked confused.
“My father disguised account codes as wiring diagrams.”
They decoded the first sequence.
B4.
217.
218.
Adrian frowned.
“Room 217.”
“And panel eleven.”
They returned underground with security.
Behind an old electrical panel, they found a sealed metal tube.
Inside was a microcassette.
Thomas’s voice played.
“If Grace ever hears this, then everything has gone wrong.”
Grace covered her mouth.
Thomas explained that he had discovered a second set of accounts.
Not Charles’s theft.
Something larger.
Money from Blackwood and Sinclair companies was funding acquisitions through anonymous holding groups.
Someone intended to secretly take control of both empires.
Thomas had discovered the architect.
But he never said the name.
Instead he gave one clue.
“The person who benefits will appear powerless until everyone else destroys each other.”
Adrian replayed the sentence.
Grace thought of Vanessa.
Eleanor.
Martin.
Victor.
Then Helen.
Could someone else have been waiting all these years?
Thomas continued.
“If they still want these files decades later, it means the plan never stopped.”
The tape clicked.
Then Thomas added one final sentence.
“The key is not money.”
“It is ownership.”
Adrian froze.
“What?”
Grace looked at him.
He rushed upstairs.
Blackwood Holdings’ corporate counsel arrived within an hour.
Documents covered the conference table.
After forty minutes, the lawyer found the problem.
A dormant trust created twenty-two years earlier still owned twelve percent of Blackwood Holdings.
Nobody knew who controlled it.
Adrian stared at the paperwork.
“Who is the beneficiary?”
The lawyer swallowed.
May you like
“Grace Miller.”
The room went completely silent.
