Chapter 11 - The Traitor Inside
Charles ordered an internal lockdown.
Company access logs were reviewed.
Phones were audited.
Executives were questioned.
Nobody was allowed to know where Dad was hiding.
Then Maya discovered something strange.
Someone had accessed Daniel’s travel schedule before every major event of the previous year.
The account belonged to Daniel’s executive assistant.
Rebecca Sloan.
Daniel refused to believe it.
“Rebecca has worked for me for six years.”
Maya looked at him.
“So did your uncle.”
Rebecca was brought into the conference room.
She looked frightened but not guilty.
Then Maya showed her the access logs.
Rebecca began crying.
“I didn’t give Caleb anything.”
“Then who used your account?”
Rebecca hesitated.
“My husband.”
Her husband, Aaron Sloan, worked in Whitmore cybersecurity.
He had administrator privileges.
Aaron disappeared before investigators reached his apartment.
Inside, agents found cryptocurrency accounts connected to Caleb.
They also found photographs of me.
Some had been taken outside my university.
Others outside my doctor’s office.
Daniel went pale.
“They were watching Grace.”
“For how long?”
Maya checked the earliest date.
“Fourteen months.”
That meant surveillance had begun before my pregnancy.
Why?
The answer lay in Grandma’s ledger.
One entry listed a trust I had never heard of.
The Evelyn Hart Family Trust.
Grandma had created it six months before she died.
Its beneficiary was me.
At age twenty-five, I was supposed to inherit twelve million dollars.
Dad knew.
Caleb knew.
And Carter Meridian Holdings had borrowed against that future inheritance.
My identity had not been chosen merely because my credit was clean.
Dad had used me because I had assets.
Assets he expected to control until I turned twenty-five.
Daniel looked furious.
“You were their collateral.”
I stared at Grandma’s signature.
“She was trying to protect me.”
Maya nodded.
“She also included an unusual clause.”
“What clause?”
“If anyone attempted to borrow against the trust without your direct notarized consent, management automatically transferred to an independent fiduciary.”
“Who?”
Maya smiled slightly.
“Me.”
I stared at her.
“You knew Grandma?”
“Very well.”
Before I could ask more, her phone buzzed.
Maya looked at the screen.
Her smile disappeared.
“What?”
She turned the phone toward us.
A photograph showed Dad sitting inside a hotel room.
A newspaper lay on the table displaying that morning’s date.
Underneath was a message.
May you like
THE WITNESS FOR THE GIRL.
RETURN THE LEDGER OR ROBERT DIES.
