Chapter 5 - THE LETTER
Daniel covered me with his body.
Another shot hit the kitchen frame.
His security team returned fire.
Glass rained across the floor.
I could hear myself breathing.
Too loud.
Too fast.
Daniel grabbed the steel box.
“Back door.”
We ran.
Barely.
A man came through the side entrance.
Daniel hit him with the box.
The man dropped.
Security pinned him.
I recognized him.
He had worked at our estate for three years.
Victoria’s driver.
His name was Owen.
He looked at me from the floor.
“Should’ve stayed in the car.”
Daniel kicked the gun away.
“Who sent you?”
Owen smiled through blood.
“You know.”
Police took him.
He said nothing else.
Back in Chicago, I finished Dad’s letter.
Victoria was never legally married to him.
Their ceremony had happened while Dad’s divorce from my mother was still unresolved.
Months later, Victoria convinced him they had corrected the paperwork.
They had not.
She had no spousal inheritance rights.
The later will giving her control was even more important because without it she got almost nothing.
Then Dad wrote about me.
The shares were mine.
Held in trust until I turned twenty-five.
My birthday was six months away.
Victoria had needed a permanent solution before then.
I thought about Ambrose.
The locked bedroom.
My stomach turned.
Daniel read the next ledger.
Ambrose had paid Victoria eight million dollars through offshore accounts.
Not for company debt.
For “succession resolution.”
I stared.
“What does that mean?”
Daniel’s jaw tightened.
“I can guess.”
“Don’t.”
He stopped.
Good.
I did not want anyone explaining my own nightmare to me.
Then we opened the flash drive.
Encrypted.
Daniel’s forensic team needed hours.
While they worked, police arrested Victoria’s driver for the lake-house shooting.
Victoria went on television.
She cried.
She said Owen was obsessed with me.
She claimed she had fired him weeks earlier.
Payroll records showed he had been paid that morning.
Then Lawrence Ambrose disappeared.
Private jet.
No flight plan.
Daniel’s people tracked the plane to Canada.
Too late.
Ambrose was gone.
At 6:13 p.m., the flash drive opened.
The first video showed my father sitting at his desk.
Alive.
Thin.
Terrified.
He looked directly into the camera.
“If Emily sees this, I failed.”
Then someone entered behind him.
Victoria.
She placed a glass of water beside his hand.
Dad waited until she left.
Then whispered.
May you like
“She’s poisoning me.”
