Chapter 6 - The Man Who Owned GavinHis name was Adrian Vale.
He had been my father's closest business partner.
He had supposedly died in a boating accident.
Apparently, he hadn't.
Nathaniel took me to an old office building outside Baltimore.
Adrian was waiting.
He was seventy-one, thin, impeccably dressed, and terrifyingly calm.
He looked at me for several seconds.
Then he said,
“You have your father's stubbornness.”
I sat across from him.
“You knew me?”
“I knew of you.”
“Why did you let me believe my brother didn't exist?”
He looked at Nathaniel.
“That was your father's decision.”
“My father lied to me.”
“He was trying to protect you.”
“From Gavin?”
“From all of us.”
That wasn't reassuring.
Adrian slid a file across the desk.
Inside was the original lawsuit.
My father's lawsuit against Gavin.
It alleged theft of intellectual property.
Fraud.
Conspiracy.
And attempted corporate takeover.
At the bottom was a final page.
A settlement.
Gavin agreed to surrender control of certain patents.
My father agreed to withdraw the lawsuit.
But then there was a handwritten amendment.
In the event of Thomas Bellamy's death, ownership shall transfer to Cassandra Bellamy, his sole recognized heir.
I stared.
“Why didn't I inherit anything?”
Adrian looked at me.
“Because someone intercepted the transfer.”
“Who?”
He didn't answer.
Instead, he handed me a bank statement.
A trust account had been opened in my name.
It contained $31 million.
The money had been deposited thirteen years ago.
The exact year I married Gavin.
I stared at the account.
“I never knew this existed.”
“No.”
“Where is the money now?”
“Gone.”
My pulse quickened.
“Where?”
Adrian smiled faintly.
“That is what we are trying to discover.”
Nathaniel interrupted.
“That's why Gavin filed for divorce.”
I looked at him.
“He wants the money?”
“He wants us to believe the money is hidden somewhere.”
“What does that mean?”
Adrian leaned forward.
“Your father discovered that Gavin wasn't merely stealing corporate assets.”
“He was using your inheritance to finance something called Project Atlas.”
I had heard the name before.
A classified corporate initiative buried under Rourke Regional Mobility's research division.
“What's Project Atlas?”
Adrian's face hardened.
“Not transportation.”
My stomach dropped.
“Then what?”
He pushed a document toward me.
It described a predictive mobility system.
Massive data collection.
Government contracts.
Biometric tracking.
Surveillance architecture.
Gavin hadn't built a transportation empire.
He had built a surveillance network disguised as one.
And the company had been collecting private data for years.
Millions of people.
Passengers.
Drivers.
Employees.
Government personnel.
Even politicians.
I looked at Adrian.
“Who authorized it?”
He didn't answer.
Nathaniel did.
“The board.”
“And who is on the board?”
Nathaniel looked directly at me.
“That's what you need to find out.”
That evening I returned home.
The mansion was silent.
Too silent.
I entered the study.
The safe door was open.
The original records were gone.
All of them.
Someone had entered the house.
I checked the security system.
The cameras had been disabled for eleven minutes.
Exactly eleven.
Then I noticed something on the desk.
A single envelope.
My name was written on it.
Inside was one photograph.
Me.
Standing beside Gavin on our wedding day.
Across my face someone had drawn a black circle.
On the back were six words.
You should have stayed invisible.
My phone rang.
Nathaniel.
I answered.
His voice was urgent.
“Cassandra, get out of the house.”
“Why?”
“Because I just found something in Gavin's private server.”
“What?”
“A video.”
“Of what?”
There was a pause.
“Your father's last night alive.”
I stopped breathing.
“Send it.”
“I can't.”
“Why?”
“Because whoever filmed it is still alive.”
Then I heard something crash on his end.
“Nathan?”
Silence.
“Nathan!”
Nothing.
May you like
I grabbed my coat.
And ran.
