Chapter 1 - The Voice from the Grave
"My father had been gone less than twenty-four hours, and you were already stealing everything he spent his life building."
Gavin Barrett barely looked at me as he tossed a folder across the marble table.
I was still wearing the black dress from my father's funeral. The house smelled of fresh lilies, but all I could taste was betrayal.
For three days, Gavin had played the grieving son-in-law. He accepted sympathy from Summit Enterprises executives, shook hands, and promised everyone he would protect my father's legacy.
The mask was gone now.
His mother, Celina, had already traded mourning clothes for a bright red dress. The pearl necklace I had given her for Christmas rested around her neck as if mocking me.
"The company's drowning in debt," Gavin said coolly. "Your father left nothing but problems. Signing your sixty percent over to me was the only smart decision you ever made."
I opened the folder.
My signature stared back at me.
Then the memory crashed into place.
Two weeks earlier, I had been burning with a fever. Gavin brought me tea, sat beside me, squeezed my hand, and insisted urgent banking documents couldn't wait until morning. I trusted him enough to sign wherever he pointed.
They weren't bank forms.
They were divorce papers... and documents transferring every share I owned.
"You planned this."
"I planned what you were too weak to understand," he replied without the slightest remorse.
I stepped closer.
"My father hired you when nobody knew your name. He made you an executive. He treated you like family."
Gavin laughed.
"He kept me on a leash. Marrying you was simply the fastest way to reach the top."
As he spoke, his phone lit up on the table.
A message flashed across the screen before he turned it over.
Everything's almost finished. Meet me after she's gone. —Lena
His secretary.
The same woman who had been strangely calm the morning my father died... and who had disappeared for nearly an hour before anyone called the ambulance.
Something inside me tightened.
I slapped Gavin.
Celina rushed at me, grabbed my hair, and slammed me against the edge of the table.
Pain exploded across my forehead.
Gavin didn't even flinch.
Instead, he called security.
"Throw her out. No phone. No cards. No luggage. She owns nothing here."
"My father bought this house!"
"Your father is dead."
Two guards dragged me across the foyer while Celina laughed that I wasn't even fit to run a kitchen.
Rain hammered down outside as they shoved me through the gates barefoot. Blood trickled down my face while Gavin lifted a glass from the balcony.
"Let's see how long the princess survives now."
The gates closed.
I started walking through the storm with nowhere left to go.
Then another memory surfaced.
The night before Dad's fatal accident, I had overheard Gavin whispering to Lena.
"If everything goes as planned tomorrow..."
At the time, I thought they were discussing a business deal. Now I wasn't so sure.
I reached into my coat and felt the sealed envelope my father had told me never to open unless something happened to him.
I called our family lawyer from a payphone at a nearby gas station.
"Open it," he said quietly. "Then play the recording inside."
My hands trembled as I broke the seal. Inside was a heavy iron key and a small digital recorder.
The recording clicked on.
Then I heard a voice that should never have been possible.
"My dear Naomi..."
It was my father. His voice was strong, lacking the weakness of his final days.
"If you are listening to this, it means I am gone, and Gavin has shown his true colors. Do not cry for me, my brave girl. Cry for him. Because the company he thinks he just stole... is nothing but a hollow shell."
I stopped breathing.
The rain continued to lash against the glass of the phone booth, but the cold had entirely left my body.
"I knew about him and Lena," my father's voice continued, a dark edge of fury lacing his words. "I knew he was funneling money. So, for the past year, I legally transferred every core asset, every patent, and every valuable contract out of Summit Enterprises into a shadow corporation."
A shadow corporation.
"Gavin just stole a company buried in three billion dollars of toxic debt. He doesn't hold the throne, Naomi. He holds a ticking time bomb. Take the iron key to Arthur Pendelton. He has the real documents. It is time for you to become the wolf I raised you to be."
The recording ended.
May you like
I stood in the freezing rain, wiping the blood from my forehead. I wasn't crying anymore. The princess Gavin had thrown out was dead.
It was time to ruin him.
