Chapter 3 - DEEPENING FRACTURESThe revelation rocked my world to its core.
My mother hadn't just abandoned us out of selfish apathy—she had used three helpless infants as human bargaining chips to escape a bloody mob execution. Dad had spent thirty years carrying the burden of that horrific secret, protecting us from knowing that our mother had literally bartered our lives for her own skin.
"Why didn't you go to the police?" I asked, horror choking my words.
"Because the syndicate had cops in their pocket," Dad said, grabbing my hands tightly. "If I went to the law, they would have taken you girls away or put a bullet in my head. I begged the syndicate leader for mercy. I made a deal with him. I gave up everything I owned, took on a debt I worked twenty years to pay off, and agreed to take you girls and disappear into the shadows. Maria walked away with a new identity, paid for by the blood of my sacrifice."
"And now she's back," I realized, the pieces finally coming together. "Because the syndicate is gone, the debt is expired, and she sees us on Forbes magazine cover."
"She didn't come back alone, Ava," Dad warned, his voice grave. "Maria never acts unless someone is pulling her strings. She’s too cowardly."
I drove back to Manhattan with my head spinning. The puzzle was far bigger than a simple extortion attempt. Someone was orchestrating this to completely destroy Thompson Global.
When I arrived at the office, a new crisis was exploding.
Claire was in the executive boardroom, screaming into her phone, while Sophie was frantically looking at live stock tickers. Thompson Global was down twelve percent. Major corporate clients were threatening to pull their contracts due to the negative press and the impending financial freeze requested by Vance.
"Where were you?" Claire demanded when I walked in. "The board of directors just called an emergency meeting for tomorrow morning! They are talking about forcing us to resign as co-CEOs to save the company's valuation!"
"Let them try," Sophie growled. "We control fifty-one percent of the voting shares!"
"Not if Vance’s legal freeze goes through!" Claire fired back, her stress reaching a boiling point. "If a judge freezes our shares, the board can appoint an interim CEO! Ava, where were you?"
"I was with Dad," I said quietly.
"Dad?" Claire threw her hands in the air. "Ava, Dad is living in the past! We are losing our life's work right now! We need to settle with Maria! Give her fifty million, sign a strict NDA, and make her go away forever!"
"No!" I shouted, slamming my palm on the glass table. "We are not giving that monster a single dime! You don't know what she did, Claire! She didn't just leave us—she traded our lives to criminals to save herself!"
The room went dead silent. Claire and Sophie stared at me, paralyzed by the horrific truth.
"What... what did you just say?" Sophie whispered, her face draining of color.
I revealed everything Dad had told me. The mob, the stolen bearer bonds, the horrific bargain Dad made to keep us alive.
Instead of bringing us together, the truth seemed to split us apart.
"If that's true," Claire said, her voice shaking with a terrifying realization, "then our entire life is built on a lie. Dad lied to us for thirty years!"
"He lied to protect us!" I defended him fiercely.
"He kept us in the dark!" Claire shouted back. "If we had known this, we could have prepared! We could have built legal defenses! Now we're completely exposed! Maria has power over us because of Dad's secret!"
"Claire, stop it!" Sophie intervened, but the tension was thick enough to choke on.
Before we could continue, my desk phone rang. It was the private line—a line only three people had access to.
I picked it up on speaker.
"Ava Thompson," a suave, aristocratic voice sneered through the speaker.
"Who is this?" I demanded.
"Just a concerned shareholder," the voice replied smoothly. "You spent thirty years thinking you were the hunters, Ava. But your empire was built on a foundation of sand. Tell your father that Julian Sterling sends his warmest regards."
Julian Sterling.
The billionaire founder of Sterling Dynamics—our fiercest rival in the tech sector.
May you like
"You..." I gasped as the horrifying reality slammed into me. "You're funding Maria."
"Funding her?" Julian chuckled coldly. "My dear girl... I bought her. And tomorrow morning, during your board meeting, I will buy the rest of your father's legacy."
