Chapter 12 - The Unknown Creditor
The message on the screen glowed with an eerie, steady light against the gray backdrop of the rainy downtown plaza. Clara stared at the words, her mind racing to connect the dots of a puzzle that seemed to expand every time she thought a piece had finally clicked into place.
"What does that mean?" Clara asked, her voice dropping to a tense whisper. "Your father's estate was fully audited by the federal regulators this morning. Every account tied to the holding company was accounted for."
Julian shook his head slowly, his fingers trembling as he clutched the phone. "Not every account. There was a private trust—one my father set up before he died, completely off the books. I thought it was just a rumor my mother used to scare the board."
"If it was off the books, how did an unknown number know about it?" Clara pressed, looking around the crowded street as if expecting someone to step out of the shadows and point a finger at them.
Before Julian could answer, a sleek black sedan pulled up directly alongside the curb. The rear window rolled down smoothly, revealing the sharp, composed face of Marcus Vance’s former defense attorney, a man named Arthur Vance who was distantly related to the family but had kept his distance from their corporate operations for over a decade.
"Get in," Arthur said, his voice clipped and urgent. "If you stay standing on these steps for another two minutes, you won't live to see the sunset."
Julian hesitated, his eyes narrowing. "Why should we trust you, Arthur? You spent the last five years drafting shell corporation documents for my mother."
"I drafted what I was paid to draft," Arthur replied coldly, tapping his fingers against the leather armrest. "But I also kept copies of every single transaction directive signed by your grandfather forty years ago. The fifty million dollars wasn't embezzled from the startup, Clara—it was stolen from your grandfather's original patent pool back in the nineteen-eighties."
Clara’s breath hitched. Her grandfather, Thomas Hayes, had been a brilliant electrical engineer who died penniless after losing his patents in a bitter corporate takeover orchestrated by the Vance family decades before she was even born.
"My grandfather?" Clara choked out, taking a step toward the car. "That's impossible. The Hayes family had nothing to do with Vance Global."
"Your grandfather didn't lose his patents to a competitor, Clara," Arthur said, opening the rear door from the inside. "He lost them to the Vance family. And that fifty million dollars wasn't a corporate slush fund—it was the initial payout from the patent sale that was supposed to be split equally between the two families before your grandfather was forced out of the market."
Julian stared at Arthur in absolute shock, slowly processing the horrifying historical weight of the confession. He looked back at Clara, whose face had gone completely pale as the decades-long vendetta finally snapped into sharp, blinding focus.
May you like
Without another word, Clara climbed into the back of the sedan, pulling Julian in beside her just as a heavy black SUV pulled up across the street, its tinted windows rolling down to reveal the cold, menacing glare of men wearing private security uniforms bearing no insignia.
---
