Chapter 6 - Three Hundred WitnessesNobody moved.
Three hundred people stared at me.
Some recognized the tension immediately.
Others laughed nervously.
Someone whispered that it must be a surprise.
My mother appeared at the ballroom entrance.
Her face was pale.
Jason stood behind her.
I looked at both of them.
Then I looked at the screen behind me.
“Before anyone leaves,” I said, “there are a few things you deserve to know.”
Jason shook his head.
“Meline, don't.”
The audience turned toward him.
He suddenly realized how badly he had misjudged the situation.
I pressed a button.
The first document appeared.
A financial authorization carrying my name.
The room murmured.
“This document was created without my consent.”
Another image.
A loan application.
“My identity was used to secure a twenty-eight-million-dollar loan.”
Gasps.
Another.
A digital authorization.
“This signature was forged.”
My father shouted from the back,
“You're destroying your own family!”
I looked at him.
“No.”
I pointed toward the screen.
“You did that yourselves.”
Jason tried to approach the stage.
A security officer stopped him.
He looked at me.
“You're humiliating me.”
I answered quietly.
“You planned to bankrupt me.”
He went still.
I continued.
“For months, members of my family worked with my fiancé's family to use my identity and assets for financial gain.”
People began pulling out phones.
Recording.
Good.
Let them.
Then I showed the last document.
The projected corporate ownership structure.
The ballroom became silent.
Because the document revealed something none of them expected.
My company.
Meridian Shield.
Its valuation.
Its subsidiaries.
The assets under protection.
And my name.
Jason stared at the screen.
His mouth opened.
“No.”
My mother looked at him.
“What is that?”
I said,
“You wanted to know what I was worth.”
Jason looked at me.
“You own that?”
“Yes.”
His expression changed.
Not guilt.
Horror.
He had spent months believing I was a low-paid employee.
Suddenly, he realized the woman he tried to exploit was worth more than the business he hoped to save.
My uncle shouted from a table,
“Meline, how much?”
I ignored him.
Then someone asked,
“Why didn't you tell anyone?”
I looked at my family.
“Because I wanted to know whether they loved me without the money.”
The silence afterward was painful.
Then Sydney stepped into the ballroom.
Terrence followed.
Everyone saw them.
Everyone looked at her stomach.
She stood trembling.
Terrence's voice was quiet.
“I want to say something.”
No one stopped him.
He walked to the center.
“I came here believing I was attending my brother-in-law's wedding.”
A bitter laugh escaped him.
“Apparently, I was also attending the funeral of my marriage.”
Sydney started crying.
Terrence looked at her.
“I deserve the truth.”
She whispered the name of the baby's biological father.
A man in the audience turned white.
The ballroom erupted.
He stood slowly.
His name was Daniel.
Jason's closest business partner.
The same consultant who had been helping with the loan.
The same man whose financial firm had handled the forged documents.
I stared at him.
Daniel stared back.
For the first time that day, I understood the full design.
This wasn't just a family betrayal.
It was a network.
Jason.
My parents.
Daniel.
Sydney.
The Caldwell hotel empire.
And possibly someone inside my own company.
Daniel took one step toward the door.
Two investigators blocked him.
He stopped.
Jason looked at him.
“You told me she would never find out.”
Daniel said nothing.
My heart pounded.
Then Helena walked onto the stage.
She handed me another folder.
“There's one last thing.”
I opened it.
Inside was a photograph.
A surveillance image.
Taken six months earlier.
Jason.
Daniel.
Sydney.
And someone else.
My blood froze.
The fourth person in the photograph was Adrian Cole.
My chief security architect.
And they weren't meeting in secret to discuss the wedding.
They were meeting inside one of my company's secured offices.
I looked at Helena.
“Why was Adrian there?”
She didn't answer immediately.
Then she said,
“Because he wasn't helping them steal your money.”
I frowned.
“Then what was he helping them steal?”
Helena turned the photograph over.
A handwritten note was attached to the back.
I read it.
Three words.
Project Black Ledger.
My entire body went cold.
I had never heard that name.
May you like
And suddenly, I realized the loan was only the surface.
Someone had been digging much deeper into my company.
