Chapter 7 - The Locked Room
Dempster looked as shocked as Selena.
That did not prove innocence.
Selena stepped away.
“Explain.”
“I can't.”
“Wrong answer.”
“I've never seen that recording.”
“My mother named you.”
“I was twenty-one when she died.”
“She knew you.”
“Yes.”
“Why would she warn me about you?”
“I don't know.”
Selena wanted to believe him.
That frightened her.
Belief had cost her before.
So she removed the ring.
Dempster watched.
She placed it on the desk.
His face revealed almost nothing.
Almost.
“I need space.”
“You’ll have it.”
No argument.
Selena moved to a guest suite with Brooke.
For two days, she investigated Dempster herself.
She found arrests that vanished.
Investigations that stalled.
Competitors frightened of him.
But she also found something unexpected.
Dempster had spent years dismantling companies connected to Meridian.
Quietly.
One acquisition at a time.
He had been destroying his father’s network from inside the legitimate economy.
Then Selena found the original metadata from Marianne’s video.
The file had been altered.
One sentence inserted.
The warning about Dempster.
Someone had manipulated her mother’s recording.
She ran downstairs.
Dempster was in Gabriel’s office.
“I was wrong.”
He looked up.
Selena placed the ring on the desk.
Then pushed it toward him.
“I took this off because I didn't trust you.”
“You had reason.”
“I still have reason.”
“Good.”
She frowned.
“Good?”
“Trust shouldn't require blindness.”
Something inside her softened.
She picked up the ring.
Instead of putting it on, she held it.
“Help me find who edited the video.”
They traced the manipulation to an old Meridian server.
Location: a warehouse owned by Wright Holdings.
Alidoro.
But before they could leave, Celia called.
She had remembered something.
Marianne had kept a second archive inside the Flores mansion.
A room Gabriel had sealed after her death.
Dempster knew nothing about it.
They searched the architectural plans.
There it was.
A windowless space behind the library.
No marked entrance.
Selena found the seam in the paneling.
Key 317 fit.
The wall opened.
Inside were boxes.
Dozens.
Marianne’s handwriting covered them.
Selena cried before touching anything.
Dempster stood behind her.
She reached back without looking.
His hand met hers.
No speech.
No promise.
Just warmth.
Then they found the final box.
SELENA.
Inside was a childhood photograph.
A birth certificate.
And a legal document.
Dempster read it first.
His face changed.
“What?”
He handed it to her.
Selena read.
Marianne had created a trust.
Its primary asset was a 31 percent ownership stake in a company Selena knew very well.
Wright Holdings.
Selena stared.
“This can't be real.”
“It is.”
“How?”
“Your mother funded Charles Wright’s first company.”
The implication was enormous.
Alidoro had spent years pretending Selena needed him.
In reality, Selena’s mother had built part of his family fortune.
Then Dempster noticed a second page.
His eyes narrowed.
“Selena.”
“What?”
“This trust activates under one condition.”
She read the clause.
Upon verified evidence of fraud committed by a Wright heir against the beneficiary.
Alidoro’s forged contract qualified.
Selena now had the power to seize voting control.
Her phone buzzed.
A message from Alidoro.
I know what you found.
Another arrived.
If you use it, Brooke dies first.
Then a photograph loaded.
May you like
Brooke was bound to a chair.
And behind her stood Victor Flores.
