Chapter 3 - THE NAME FROM MY PAST
I thought I had misheard her.
“My father?”
Clara nodded weakly.
“Your father.”
“My father died eleven years ago.”
“I know.”
She closed her eyes.
“He didn't.”
I couldn't speak.
My father, Richard Carter, had supposedly died from a heart attack in Switzerland.
I had attended the funeral.
I had buried his ashes.
I had spent years believing I had escaped his shadow.
Clara's fingers tightened around mine.
“He met me six months ago.”
“Why?”
“He wanted information about you.”
“What information?”
“Everything.”
I stared at her.
She continued.
“He asked about your companies.”
“My companies?”
“He wanted to know whether you still had the old accounts.”
I felt cold.
“What old accounts?”
Clara looked terrified.
“The ones you never told me about.”
I understood.
There was only one possibility.
The Meridian Network.
My father's creation.
The organization I had inherited after his supposed death.
The network I had spent years transforming from a criminal empire into something resembling justice.
Clara knew enough to recognize the name.
But she didn't know the truth.
She had stumbled into a war that had begun before she was born.
The door opened.
A man entered.
My chief security officer, Marcus Reed.
He leaned close.
“We found something.”
“What?”
“Thomas Mercer has been receiving payments from offshore accounts.”
“How long?”
“Six years.”
“From whom?”
Marcus hesitated.
“Carter Holdings.”
My blood ran cold.
My own family had been paying Clara's father.
For what?
Marcus handed me a file.
Inside were photographs.
Thomas.
My father.
Several federal judges.
Two senators.
And Clara.
I turned another page.
There was a photograph of Clara outside a restaurant.
The date was six months before we met.
Someone had been watching her.
I looked at Marcus.
“Who took these?”
“We don't know.”
I closed the file.
“Find out.”
“Already working on it.”
Then my phone rang.
The number was impossible.
It belonged to my father's private line.
The number that had been disconnected eleven years ago.
I answered.
Silence.
Then a man's voice.
“You finally stopped pretending.”
My body went rigid.
“Dad?”
He laughed.
“Hello, Andrew.”
I stepped away from Clara's bed.
“You're alive.”
“I've been alive this entire time.”
“Why did you hurt my wife?”
“I didn't.”
“You ordered it.”
“No.”
His voice became colder.
“I ordered them to frighten her.”
“Your orders caused the death of my child.”
Silence.
Then he said:
“That was not supposed to happen.”
I looked at Clara.
“Why?”
“Because she knows something.”
“What?”
May you like
“She found the ledger.”
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