Chapter 5 - HER FATHER’S LAST PROMISE
Elias Cross answered on the third call.
“Isabella.”
No surprise.
No confusion.
As if he had been waiting.
“You signed a medical certification.”
“Yes.”
“Declaring me impaired.”
“No.”
She stopped.
“What?”
“I signed a blank evaluation eleven years ago.”
Arthur closed his eyes.
Rebecca whispered,
“Jesus.”
Isabella tightened her grip on the phone.
“Why?”
“Your father asked me to.”
“My father?”
“He believed there might come a time when you needed protection from the company.”
“That makes no sense.”
“It will.”
“Where are you?”
Silence.
“Elias.”
“Boston.”
She flew there before dawn.
No press.
No corporate aircraft.
A borrowed car from the airport.
Elias lived in a narrow townhouse near Beacon Hill.
He looked much older than she remembered.
Silver hair.
Thin shoulders.
Same blue eyes as her father.
He opened the door and said,
“You look like him when you’re angry.”
Isabella walked past him.
“Don’t.”
He nodded.
Fair.
They sat in his study.
Eleven years of silence sat between them.
Finally Elias spoke.
“Your father discovered Soren was using Cross Dominion.”
“For what?”
“To finance companies outside the group.”
“Without authorization?”
“Not exactly.”
That answer irritated her.
“He created legal structures so complicated that authorization became meaningless.”
“Dad discovered it?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Two years before he died.”
“Why didn’t he remove Soren immediately?”
“He tried.”
“What happened?”
“Soren threatened you.”
Isabella went still.
“How?”
“He knew where you lived.”
“Who you dated.”
“Your travel.”
“Your mother’s medical history.”
“He never said he would hurt you.”
“He didn’t need to.”
“What did Dad do?”
“He negotiated.”
That word hurt.
Her father had always taught her never to negotiate with anyone who used fear as leverage.
But fathers break their own rules for daughters.
“What did he promise?”
Elias looked down.
“That Soren could keep certain holdings.”
“In exchange for?”
“Leaving you outside it.”
“What holdings?”
“The network Marcus used.”
Hale Meridian.
Its lenders.
Its acquisitions.
The companies Isabella thought she indirectly controlled.
Soren’s system had been built underneath hers.
“Marcus never built an empire.”
“No.”
“Soren did.”
“Partly.”
“Why Marcus?”
“Because Marcus was ambitious enough to be useful and arrogant enough not to notice.”
Isabella almost smiled despite herself.
Accurate.
“What about Camille?”
Elias looked genuinely uneasy.
“She was raised by Soren.”
“Daughter?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“Student.”
He hesitated.
“Weapon.”
Camille had spent years entering the lives of executives Soren wanted to control.
She learned tastes.
Weaknesses.
Affairs.
Debt.
Fear.
Marcus had been a long assignment.
Isabella was the endgame.
“Why me?”
“Because your father died before he finished dismantling Soren’s network.”
“And Soren believes I have whatever he was looking for.”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
She stood.
“You expect me to believe that?”
Elias opened a drawer.
He removed an envelope.
Her father’s handwriting.
FOR ISABELLA ONLY.
She stopped breathing.
“I was supposed to give you this when Soren returned.”
“Why not eleven years ago?”
“Your father believed ignorance would keep you safe.”
She laughed once.
Bitterly.
“Men keep doing that.”
Elias lowered his eyes.
She opened the letter.
Isabella,
If you are reading this, then Victor waited longer than I hoped.
I made one mistake I pray you will not repeat.
I thought controlling the empire meant controlling its assets.
Victor understands something darker.
Control the people.
The assets follow.
There is a ledger.
Not financial.
Personal.
Every judge.
Every banker.
Every minister.
Every executive.
Every debt.
Every affair.
Every secret Victor used to build his network.
I took it.
He wants it back.
You will not find it in a safe.
You will find it where I taught you to build something no one could take away.
Isabella read the final sentence twice.
She knew exactly where he meant.
Her father’s first factory.
Abandoned twenty years earlier.
The place where he taught fourteen-year-old Isabella how to read a balance sheet on an overturned shipping crate.
They drove there that afternoon.
The factory had been converted into storage units.
One wall remained untouched.
Behind a rusted metal plaque bearing her father’s first company logo, they found a sealed compartment.
Empty.
Someone had gotten there first.
May you like
But written in dust across the inside was one word.
MARCUS.
