Chapter 8 - The Sister I Never Knew
Brenda sent her location.
An abandoned Escalante textile factory outside Denver.
Marcus wanted me to stay behind.
I refused.
Andrew demanded to come.
I looked at him.
“You paid Victor.”
“I can explain.”
“No. You can cooperate with security or remain detained.”
For once, he obeyed.
We found Brenda tied to a chair inside the old manager’s office.
No kidnappers.
No Celeste.
Only a laptop displaying a countdown.
Twenty-nine minutes.
Marcus cut Brenda free.
The screen activated.
Celeste appeared in a recorded message.
“Brenda, I am sorry.”
My half-sister went still.
“I arranged this because Rafael’s final archive cannot open unless the family agreement reaches full emergency status.”
Brenda stared at the screen.
“She did this?”
Celeste continued.
“I needed Mariana, Samuel, Margaret and Andrew in the same crisis. Only then could the system reveal who killed Rafael.”
Brenda began to cry.
“She let me think someone would murder her.”
I did not know how to comfort her.
I had learned she was my sister only hours earlier.
She had helped frame me.
Yet I understood the wound in her voice.
A mother returning after eighteen years only to use fear as leverage.
The countdown reached twenty minutes.
A live feed appeared.
Celeste sat inside a dark room.
Victor Lang stood behind her holding a syringe.
“Reverse the asset freeze,” he said. “Transfer voting authority to Hale Meridian or Celeste dies.”
Samuel whispered, “Victor needs Andrew’s corporate structure.”
“Why?”
“Andrew’s twenty-million-dollar transfer gave Hale Meridian control of the debt attached to Margaret’s trust.”
Andrew had unknowingly purchased the weapon Victor intended to use.
Brenda grabbed my arm.
“Save her.”
“If I transfer control, Victor gets everything.”
“She is my mother.”
“She built this trap.”
“That does not mean I want her dead.”
Victor smiled into the camera.
“Choose, Mariana.”
I sat before the laptop.
Samuel warned me not to enter my biometric code.
I entered it anyway.
Andrew exhaled in relief.
Then I selected a destination Victor had not anticipated.
The Escalante Employee Restitution Foundation.
A dormant legal entity created by a former executive years earlier.
I transferred emergency voting rights into it.
Not to Andrew.
Not to myself.
Not to Samuel.
To the employees and former pension holders.
Victor’s smile vanished.
The countdown stopped.
A sealed archive opened automatically.
A video showed my father inside his study.
A woman’s hand entered the frame and poured clear liquid into his drink.
She wore a ring identical to my wedding ring.
The video was dated three years before Andrew proposed.
I looked at Samuel.
“That ring belonged to my mother.”
He said nothing.
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My mother had died in a boating accident when I was fourteen.
No body had ever been recovered.
