Chapter 8 - THE DEAD WOMAN “My mother died in a plane crash.”
“No body was recovered.”
“My father identified her belongings.”
“Your father lied.”
Eleanor laughed once.
It was not amusement.
It was the sound a mind makes when reality becomes too painful to accept.
Marcus explained.
Victoria Vance had been a brilliant financial strategist.
Decades earlier, she helped build an encryption platform capable of hiding and transferring enormous corporate assets.
Then Julian’s father entered her life.
Companies collapsed.
Patents disappeared.
Partners betrayed one another.
Victoria vanished.
“What did she become?”
Eleanor asked.
Marcus looked toward Leo sleeping nearby.
“Someone rich enough to disappear.”
“And dangerous enough?”
“To make the Sterling family afraid.”
Eleanor stared at the photograph.
Her mother was smiling.
Alive.
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Suddenly Leo’s kidnapping attempt no longer looked like a corporate coup.
It looked like the continuation of a war that had started before Eleanor was old enough to understand it.
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