Chapter 7 - The Warehouse
The fire was contained quickly.
Too quickly.
One storage room burned.
Only one.
Legacy legal archives.
Cassidy watched the live report from the Holloway estate.
Naomi was gone.
Victor was gone.
Security footage had been deleted locally.
But Protocol 7 mirrored external cameras automatically.
Naomi entered at 6:41 p.m.
Victor at 6:48.
They carried two rolling cases.
At 7:02, Victor left alone.
At 7:07, smoke appeared.
Naomi never came out.
Cassidy’s stomach tightened.
“Is she inside?”
Mara did not answer.
Fire crews searched.
No body.
No injured person.
Then Daniel found a service door opened at 7:05.
Naomi had left through another exit.
They had staged the fire.
“What did they take?”
Cassidy asked.
A records manager checked.
“Mercer succession files.”
“Original shareholder books.”
“Pierce settlement documents.”
Cassidy stared.
“They’re erasing the origin story.”
Mara nodded.
“Or trying to.”
Fortunately, Jonathan Mercer had hated single copies.
He kept duplicate records inside a private bank archive.
Cassidy knew where.
Nobody else should have.
Then she remembered Naomi.
Naomi handled her calendar the day Cassidy visited that archive two years ago.
Maybe she knew.
Cassidy called the bank.
The vault had been accessed three hours earlier.
Authorized user.
Arthur Pierce.
Cassidy went still.
“He’s retired.”
Mara asked.
“Still authorized?”
“Not anymore.”
But the bank records said otherwise.
Someone had reinstated his authority using an old trustee resolution.
Forged.
The same handwriting authentication used in Project Heir.
Victor Lang.
Mara leaned back.
“They’re using old trust documents to rebuild authority.”
Cassidy looked at Brendan.
“Your family wanted seventeen percent through my baby.”
“But Pierce wants the whole Mercer structure.”
Brendan seemed genuinely lost now.
“I didn’t know about Pierce.”
Cassidy believed him.
That did not make him innocent of what he had approved.
Only smaller than the people using him.
Then Serena spoke quietly.
“There was a name Victor kept mentioning.”
Everyone turned.
“What name?”
“Project Founder.”
Cassidy’s expression changed.
“What did he say?”
“Something about proving Cassidy was never supposed to inherit.”
Silence.
Brendan frowned.
“What does that mean?”
Cassidy already knew what it might mean.
A forged inheritance challenge.
Not around the baby.
Around her.
If Pierce could invalidate Jonathan Mercer’s transfer to Cassidy’s mother, every later ownership claim could be challenged.
Halcyon control itself might become uncertain.
Mara asked.
“Any documents?”
Serena nodded slowly.
“I saw one.”
“Whose name was on it?”
May you like
Serena looked at Cassidy.
“Your mother’s.”
