Chapter 4 - The Blueprint They Tried to Steal
The former employee’s name was Marcus Reed.
Daniel’s security team found that much within an hour.
Finding Marcus himself proved harder.
He had resigned from Carter Development six months earlier and disappeared from Denver’s professional circles.
Emily hated that Daniel had a security team.
She hated more that she suddenly understood why.
“Police?” she asked.
Daniel nodded.
“Already contacted.”
“Already?”
“You heard the crash.”
“So did you.”
“I was sitting three feet away.”
Emily paced.
“This is my family.”
Daniel said nothing.
She turned toward him.
“Say it.”
“What?”
“That they’re criminals.”
“I don’t know that.”
“You think it.”
“I think somebody forged your signature. That’s what we can prove.”
That distinction steadied her.
Evidence.
Always evidence.
Two days later Marcus contacted them again.
He requested a public meeting.
Union Station.
No lawyers.
Daniel refused the last condition.
Marcus compromised.
One lawyer could sit twenty feet away.
Marcus arrived wearing a baseball cap and carrying an old laptop bag.
He looked exhausted.
“I didn’t forge it,” he told Emily immediately.
“Who did?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then why call me?”
“Because I processed it.”
Marcus explained that the document had appeared in Carter Development’s internal legal queue on Emily’s wedding day.
It already carried her signature.
The notary authorization came from an executive account.
“Whose?” Emily asked.
Marcus looked around.
“Your father’s.”
Her stomach tightened.
“But that isn’t the worst part.”
He opened his laptop.
“There were two versions.”
The first transferred intellectual-property rights.
The second transferred Emily’s voting shares in Carter Development.
Emily stared at him.
“I don’t have voting shares.”
Marcus looked genuinely confused.
“Yes, you do.”
“No.”
“You inherited them.”
“My grandparents left everything to my father.”
“Not everything.”
Marcus pulled up an old corporate record.
Emily read the page.
Her grandfather had created a protected block of shares twenty-seven years earlier.
Twenty-four percent.
To be transferred to Robert Carter’s eldest child upon that child’s thirty-fifth birthday.
Emily was thirty-four.
Her birthday was four months away.
“Does my father know?”
Marcus gave her a grim look.
“He’s spent years trying to change it.”
Daniel had been silent.
Now he asked, “Can Robert sell the company without those shares?”
“No.”
“Can he merge?”
“Not after Emily turns thirty-five.”
Emily understood.
Her father had not merely wanted her Calloway designs.
He needed control before her birthday.
Marcus reached into his bag.
“I copied the audit logs.”
He handed Emily a flash drive.
“Why?”
“Because they fired a woman who questioned the signature.”
“Who?”
“Legal compliance director. Nora Bennett.”
Emily knew the name.
Nora had worked for Carter Development for fifteen years.
“Where is she?”
Marcus swallowed.
“Nobody knows.”
A man entered the station.
Marcus saw him and went pale.
“I have to go.”
“Marcus—”
He stood.
“Don’t trust the board.”
Then he disappeared into the crowd.
Emily returned home with Daniel.
They copied the flash drive before opening anything.
Most files were technical logs.
One was a scanned letter from Emily’s grandfather.
Daniel read over her shoulder.
If Emily is ever pressured to surrender these shares, the attached instructions shall take effect.
“Attached instructions?” Emily whispered.
There was no attachment.
Then someone knocked.
Daniel’s security camera showed Vanessa.
Emily almost ignored her.
Vanessa knocked again.
“Emily, please.”
Daniel looked at her.
“Your decision.”
Emily opened the door.
Vanessa entered crying.
Emily felt almost nothing.
“What happened?”
Vanessa looked at Daniel, then Emily.
“Caleb is using me.”
Emily laughed once.
“You discovered that?”
“He’s planning something with Dad.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. They stop talking whenever I enter.”
“That describes most business meetings.”
Vanessa grabbed her arm.
“No. Emily, listen. Caleb said after your birthday, none of this matters.”
Emily froze.
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
Vanessa opened her purse.
“I found this in his safe.”
She removed a photocopy.
A death certificate.
Emily Carter.
Date of death: four months in the future.
Emily stared at her own name.
Daniel took the paper.
His face hardened.
Vanessa whispered, “Someone already prepared it.”
Then Emily noticed the listed informant.
Robert Carter.
Her father.
Before she could speak, the lights in the apartment went out.
Daniel’s phone vibrated.
The security system had sent one alert.
May you like
FRONT DOOR OVERRIDE ACCEPTED.
Someone had just entered with Daniel’s private access code.
