Chapter 15 - The Lowest Point
Nora immediately sent the video to the police.
The metadata had been stripped.
The room had no windows.
No identifiable sounds came from outside.
Daniel had made one mistake.
His reflection appeared briefly in a metal cabinet behind Miles.
It was enough to connect him to the video but not enough to locate them.
Police issued a warrant.
Daniel vanished before officers reached his hotel.
Evelyn claimed she had not spoken to him.
Her phone records proved otherwise.
Still, she insisted Daniel was being framed by an unstable wife desperate to steal his inheritance.
At the emergency corporate hearing the next morning, the judge temporarily suspended my authority over Whitmore Industries.
The company entered court-supervised administration.
My personal funding remained frozen.
Payroll failed.
News channels showed employees crying outside locked offices.
Daniel’s supporters blamed me.
The rescue plan appeared dead.
By afternoon, the laboratory issued preliminary results on the vial.
It contained a heart medication capable of triggering a fatal rhythm disturbance in someone with my father’s condition.
However, the sample had degraded.
Prosecutors could not prove when it was manufactured or whether it had been used.
Dr. Shaw refused to cooperate.
Evelyn remained free.
Daniel remained missing.
Miles remained a hostage.
For the first time since leaving the estate, I felt defeated.
I sat alone in the secure apartment and reread my father’s letter.
I wondered whether he had been wrong to trust me with everything.
I had failed to recognize Daniel’s hatred.
I had failed to protect the foundation.
I had failed to save the company.
Nora entered quietly.
“You need to sleep.”
“I made a promise to four thousand employees.”
“You made that promise before Lucas stole the money.”
“They do not care why their paychecks disappeared.”
“You are not responsible for Daniel’s crimes.”
“I was responsible for seeing him clearly.”
Nora placed my father’s flash drive on the table.
“You saw what he showed you.”
I opened the Final Instructions folder again.
There was the letter.
There were property documents.
There was one encrypted file we had been unable to open.
Its title was a date.
The date of my wedding.
We had tried my birthday, my father’s birthday, the estate address, and every password I could remember.
Nothing worked.
I looked down at my injured palm.
The cut from my wedding ring had become a thin red line.
Then I remembered my father’s words on the morning of my wedding.
Never forget what you promised yourself before you promised anything to him.
Before the ceremony, I had written a private vow in my journal.
I will never surrender my name to keep someone else’s love.
I typed the sentence without spaces.
The file opened.
Inside was a video recorded by my father.
He was sitting in his office.
Behind him, a digital clock showed the night he died.
May you like
“I believe Daniel may try to kill me tonight,” he said.
“And if you are seeing this, Claire, I was right.”
