CHAPTER 5 — The Billion-Dollar Lie
The investigation uncovered something even darker.
Every Whitmore company...
Every trust...
Every offshore account...
had one mysterious shareholder.
Name:
E.C. Holdings.
No photograph.
No address.
No public records.
Yet...
the company quietly owned...
51% of the Whitmore empire.
Alexander stared at the documents.
"Who owns this?"
The chief accountant whispered,
"No one knows."
"It has existed for twenty-two years."
Twenty-two years.
Exactly the same year Emily disappeared.
Rebecca smiled.
"I think we just found why someone wanted her dead."
Hours later...
Noah remembered something.
"My mom gave me another key."
He reached inside the lining of his backpack.
A tiny silver key.
Hidden so carefully that even he had forgotten it.
The key fit inside Margaret's antique music box.
Click.
A hidden compartment opened.
Inside...
was a flash drive.
One handwritten note.
And a wedding ring.
Alexander instantly recognized it.
It was the ring he had bought Emily.
The note read:
If Alex is reading this...
Everything you own legally belongs to Noah.
Not because of me.
Because Margaret changed her will twenty years ago.
Alexander looked toward the family attorney.
His face had turned ghost white.
"You knew..."
The attorney slowly nodded.
"Your mother regretted everything."
"She secretly transferred control of the empire..."
"...to Emily and her unborn child."
Victoria exploded.
"That's impossible!"
"I was supposed to marry the richest man in America!"
The attorney quietly corrected her.
May you like
"You almost married..."
"...an employee."
