Chapter 2 - The Dead Don't Speak
Just six months ago, the world believed Charlotte Vale had died.
The news reports were tragic and swift.
A devastating car crash on a rainy coastal cliff.
Both Eleanor Vale, the beloved CEO of Solmere, and her twenty-two-year-old daughter, Charlotte, were presumed dead.
But Charlotte hadn't been in the car that night.
She had stayed behind at the estate, sick with a sudden fever.
When the police arrived to deliver the horrific news, Charlotte’s world shattered.
But her grief quickly turned to cold, paralyzing terror when she received a delayed voice message from her mother.
It was sent just minutes before the crash.
“Charlotte... if you get this, run. Do not trust your Uncle Richard. The brakes... he cut the brakes. He wants the empire. Hide, my sweet girl. Hide.”
The message ended with the sound of screeching tires and breaking glass.
Charlotte ran that very night.
She left behind her diamonds, her designer clothes, and her identity.
She watched from the shadows as her Uncle Richard, her mother’s trusted brother, wept fake tears at the funeral.
She watched as he legally adopted his step-daughter, Vivian, and handed her the keys to Charlotte’s life.
They thought they had won.
They thought the billion-dollar empire was theirs forever.
They thought they could erase the Vale legacy with a single act of murder.
They were wrong.
For six months, Charlotte lived in the slums of the city.
She worked in dark diners, saving every penny, plotting her return.
She learned how to pick locks, how to hack basic security systems, and how to become completely invisible.
To reclaim her throne, she needed proof.
She needed the original, unaltered will that her mother had hidden inside the Solmere Hotel’s penthouse vault.
And she needed the secret financial ledgers that proved Richard was embezzling millions.
That was why she had taken a job as a maid in her own hotel.
That was why she had let Vivian catch her in the VIP corridor and drag her down to the lobby.
It was all a distraction.
While Vivian was busy screaming at her in front of the elite...
Charlotte’s hidden flash drive was successfully downloading Richard’s private server in the security room upstairs.
She tasted the blood on her lip and smiled.
Let them call her trash.
May you like
Let them laugh.
The countdown had already begun.
