Chapter 2 - The Man Who Was Supposed to Be Dead
I stared at the photograph until the image blurred.
“That can’t be him.”
Maya didn’t answer immediately.
That frightened me more than if she had.
She enlarged the photograph on her phone.
The timestamp was from nine days earlier.
A location tag placed it outside Montrose Diner in northern Vermont.
My father, Jonathan Carlisle, had supposedly died when his private plane crashed into Lake Champlain twelve years earlier.
The wreckage had been recovered.
His briefcase had been found.
His wedding band had been identified.
His body had not.
My mother told me there had been nothing left to recover.
I was seventeen.
I believed her.
Maya looked toward the driver.
“Office first.”
I grabbed her arm.
“No.”
“Emma.”
“If that is my father, I’m going to Vermont.”
“Not tonight.”
“Why?”
“Because someone sent this immediately after Nathan assaulted you.”
She held my gaze.
“That means whoever sent it knows where you are, knows what happened, and knows exactly which piece of information will make you abandon every rational decision.”
She was right.
I hated that she was right.
We reached Maya’s office twenty minutes later.
Her investigator, Daniel Price, was already waiting.
He placed a folder in front of me.
The first page was a copy of the forged stock transfer.
It transferred 18 percent of Carlisle Heritage Holdings from me to Nathan.
Those shares had come from my grandfather.
They had always been mine.
Nathan had never contributed a dollar toward them.
The document carried my signature.
A notary stamp.
And a witness signature.
The witness was Celeste Moreau.
I felt cold.
“She witnessed a signature I never made.”
Daniel nodded.
“There’s more.”
He turned the page.
The notary had died eighteen months before the date on the document.
For the first time that night, I smiled.
Nathan had gotten careless.
But Daniel didn’t smile back.
“We also found another transfer.”
He slid a second document toward me.
This one had been filed but not yet activated.
It transferred another 22 percent of my voting rights into a marital management entity controlled solely by Nathan.
Effective Friday.
My birthday.
“If this became effective,” Maya said, “Nathan would control forty percent of the company before the birthday trust releases your remaining shares.”
“Why would that matter?”
Daniel opened another file.
“When you turn twenty-nine, you receive the voting block your grandfather placed in trust.”
“How much?”
Maya answered.
“Thirty-one percent.”
I stared at her.
My mother had told me it was a modest inheritance.
Some real estate.
Several investment accounts.
Nothing that could alter the company.
Maya continued.
“With your existing eighteen percent and Friday’s thirty-one percent, you would control forty-nine percent directly.”
“And Nathan?”
“If his forged transfers survived, he would control enough of your stake to combine with another shareholder.”
“Who?”
Neither of them answered.
That was when I understood.
“My mother.”
Daniel slowly nodded.
Eleanor Carlisle controlled twelve percent.
Together, Nathan and my mother would have held a majority.
The room went silent.
Then my phone rang.
Unknown number.
Maya put it on speaker.
A man’s voice whispered through heavy static.
“Emma?”
My heart stopped.
I knew that voice.
Older.
Weaker.
But I knew it.
“Dad?”
There was a long pause.
Then he said the sentence that destroyed the last twelve years of my life.
May you like
“Do not go home to your mother.”
The line went dead.
