Chapter 3 - My Mother’s Last Message
By sunrise, every major business outlet in New York had footage of Celeste dragging me across the hotel lobby.
The video had been viewed twelve million times.
By noon, Solmere shares were down fourteen percent.
The board called an emergency meeting.
Marcus refused to let me attend.
Samuel filed another motion.
At 2:17 p.m., a judge ruled that Solmere could not exclude a beneficial majority shareholder from observing proceedings regarding trust-controlled assets.
At 4:00, I walked into the boardroom.
Nobody looked pleased to see me.
I sat in my mother’s old chair.
Marcus stared.
“That seat is reserved.”
“For whom?”
He didn’t answer.
The meeting lasted three hours.
They accused me of destabilizing the company.
I accused them of fraud.
They demanded proof.
I showed them seventeen million dollars in transfers.
Marcus dismissed them as development expenses.
I showed him another twenty-two million.
He called them acquisitions.
Then Samuel placed six incorporation records on the table.
Every receiving company traced back to the same registered agent in Delaware.
Adrian Mercer.
The room went silent.
Adrian smiled.
“Administrative convenience.”
“Eighty-four million dollars of convenience?” I asked.
Marcus ended the meeting.
That night, I returned to my mother’s apartment.
I hadn’t slept there since her funeral.
Her clothes were still in the closet.
A bottle of perfume sat beside the mirror.
For a moment, I was no longer an heiress fighting a board.
I was a daughter missing her mother.
Then I remembered the anonymous envelope.
I examined the photograph again.
On the back, beneath the warning about the brakes, was a tiny printed number.
Room 1708 at Solmere.
My mother’s private suite.
I drove back immediately.
Daniel met me upstairs.
The suite had been closed since her death.
I entered alone.
Nothing appeared unusual.
Then I remembered something my mother used to say when I was a child.
“When you can’t find the truth, Charlotte, look where people are too impressed to touch.”
The room contained an enormous painting of my grandfather standing in front of the original Solmere Hotel.
I removed it.
Behind the frame was a wall safe.
Inside was a phone.
Old.
Dead.
Daniel found a charger.
Twenty minutes later, the screen lit up.
There was only one file.
A video.
My mother appeared.
She looked tired.
Afraid.
“Charlotte, if you are watching this, something has happened to me.”
My knees nearly gave out.
“Do not trust the board.”
She looked directly into the camera.
“Especially Marcus.”
May you like
Then she whispered:
“The money is only the beginning.”
