Chapter 18 - The False Victory
Agents arrested Helena at a private airfield.
The offshore transfer stopped.
Employees cheered.
Vanessa cried.
Lucas hugged me.
For the first time, I believed we had won.
Then Daniel called.
“Charlotte.”
His voice sounded wrong.
“What?”
“The transfer wasn’t the real plan.”
Helena had created a second sale mechanism.
Automatic.
If she failed to cancel it before midnight, ownership of the Solmere brand itself would transfer to Meridian Crown Consortium.
Not the buildings.
The name.
The reservation systems.
The trademarks.
The global licensing agreements.
Solmere could keep its hotels and still lose the empire.
Only one authorization could cancel the transaction.
Helena’s biometric signature.
She refused.
“You want Solmere?” she told me through the detention-room glass.
“Watch it become worthless.”
I stared at the woman who destroyed my family.
“You spent twenty years trying to take something that was never yours.”
May you like
She smiled.
“By midnight, it won’t be yours either.”
