Chapter 13 - FORTY-EIGHT HOURS
I stared at Celeste.
"No."
"Yes."
"You were twenty-two."
"Twenty-three."
"That's your defense?"
"It's not a defense."
Lydia stood.
"Celeste—"
"No more."
Celeste looked at me.
"Grandmother Rose recruited me before she died."
"My grandmother?"
"She believed women were better at surviving invisible wars."
I almost laughed at the absurdity.
"She recruited her grandson's girlfriend's sister?"
"You and Damian weren't married yet."
"How comforting."
Celeste flinched.
Good.
"Why?"
"Rose knew Damian wanted power too quickly. She thought I could control him."
"Could you?"
"No."
Celeste opened her bag.
Inside was a hard drive.
"Everything is here."
"Everything?"
"Accounts. Payments. Names. Judges Malcolm bribed. Executives Rose blackmailed. Nathan's reports."
"Why give it to me?"
"Because Damian changed the passwords yesterday."
There it was again.
Not morality.
Fear.
Survival.
Rebecca examined the drive.
Encrypted.
Celeste handed her a code.
"We have forty-eight hours."
"Until what?"
"The Hale-Cross infrastructure merger automatically closes."
I frowned.
"There is no merger."
"There is."
Celeste showed me a document.
Nathan's signature.
Damian's.
Lydia's.
My forged signature.
"If it closes," Celeste said, "Damian gains control of the infrastructure trust."
"Can we stop it?"
"Yes."
"How?"
"Recover the original trust ledger."
"Where is it?"
"No one knows."
Mom entered from the adjoining room.
"I do."
We turned.
She held an old photograph.
Our lake house.
"The ledger was never in a bank."
Dad's father had hidden it.
After his death, Rose kept it.
Mom remembered seeing her remove something from a wall safe at our lake house.
The house had been abandoned since Mom's supposed death.
By midnight, we were driving north.
Forty-eight hours before Damian legally consolidated two empires.
The lake house looked exactly as grief had preserved it.
Dark cedar.
Stone chimney.
Dead garden.
Inside, dust covered everything.
Mom stopped in the hallway.
"I haven't been here since the morning of the crash."
Her voice shook.
I took her hand.
For once, neither of us apologized.
We searched until 2 a.m.
Nothing.
Then I remembered being eight years old.
Grandmother Rose hated family photographs hanging crooked.
She always adjusted one.
A painting of the lake.
I removed it.
Behind it was a wall safe.
Mom stared.
"Claire."
"What?"
"The painting wasn't there fourteen years ago."
Someone had moved the safe.
Or covered it.
The lock required six digits.
Mom tried birthdays.
Nothing.
Dad's birthday.
Nothing.
My grandfather's.
Nothing.
Then I thought about Rose.
Power mattered more to her than people.
I entered the date Victor became chairman.
Click.
Inside was one leather ledger.
And one sealed letter.
FOR CLAIRE HALE.
My hands shook as I opened it.
The letter had been written fifteen years earlier.
Before Mom's crash.
Claire,
If you are reading this, then either I miscalculated...
or Damian Cross became exactly the man I feared he would become.
I stopped breathing.
May you like
My grandmother had known Damian.
Before I did.
