Chapter 3 - The Ghost from the Past
There was a long, heavy silence on the line before a dry laugh echoed through the speaker.
“So, the high-flying billionaire finally woke up,” Julian’s voice snapped with bitter sarcasm. “I gave you two years, Calloway. I figured a guy who built a three-billion-dollar empire would have noticed his assets disappearing faster than snow in April.”
“What are you talking about?” Joseph demanded, closing his study door quietly and locking it. He pulled up his personal banking portal on his laptop. Everything looked normal—balances intact, stock portfolios green.
“You’re looking at the dummy portal, you idiot,” Julian said. “Sloane swapped your primary access servers sixteen months ago during your company's network upgrade. The tech company that installed your home and office firewalls? Owned by Vanguard Crest. A shell company registered under her ex-fiancé.”
Joseph’s breath hitched. “Marcus Thorne.”
“Bingo,” Julian replied. “Marcus Thorne didn’t go bankrupt in 2019. He faked his firm's collapse, took a surgical face lift in Switzerland, and assumed the identity of 'Victor Vance'—your mother’s current attending physician.”
The realization hit Joseph like a physical blow. The doctor who was prescribing his mother’s daily 'sedatives'—the man with the scar on his left temple—was Sloane’s former lover!
“They aren’t just stealing your money, Joseph,” Julian continued coldly. “They are executing a long-term corporate takeover. Sloane signed off on a secondary life insurance policy on you six months ago using a forged power of attorney. The payout is $150 million. But the real prize is Calloway Developments. Once you are declared mentally incompetent from 'early-onset neurodegenerative disease'—which that green tea is inducing via arsenic micro-dosing—Sloane assumes sole conservatorship over your estate.”
Joseph looked down at his desk. His hands were trembling, not from fear, but from a rage so dense it burned the back of his throat. They weren't just trying to rob him. They had tortured his mother—the woman who had scrubbed floors until her knees bled to raise him—making her eat out of garbage bins in her own home!
“How do I prove it?” Joseph growled.
“You can’t. Not yet,” Julian said. “If you confront her now, Marcus will trigger the emergency clause in your trust. They will have you committed to a psychiatric ward before sunrise, using Dr. Vance’s fake diagnostic records. You need the master drive.”
May you like
“Where is it?”
“It’s in the panic room hidden behind the wine cellar,” Julian said. “The code isn’t a sequence of numbers. It’s a biometric vault wired to Sloane’s retina. But there’s another way... if you’re brave enough to play dead.”
