Chapter 6 - The Unsuspected Ending
The next morning at 9:00 AM, the corporate headquarters of my firm was dead silent as two police officers marched into the HR department.
Victoria was in the middle of a meeting when the handcuffs clicked around her wrists. She screamed, she cried, she looked at me standing at the end of the hallway, expecting me to save her. I merely watched, my arms crossed, as she was led away in tears, her career, her reputation, and her freedom gone in an instant.
Three months later, the dust finally settled.
Mark pleaded guilty to corporate fraud and grand larceny to avoid a maximum sentence, receiving seven years in a state penitentiary. His mother, Eleanor, was sentenced to two years of house arrest and heavy fines for child neglect, her health rapidly deteriorating from the stress and the sudden loss of her luxury lifestyle. Chloe was forced to sell every luxury item she owned just to pay off the debts Mark had accumulated in her name, ending up working minimum wage at a local retail store.
My sister, Victoria, faced the harshest penalty, sentenced to eight years for corporate espionage and embezzlement, her family forced to sell the Alabang home I had bought them to pay back the restitution court order.
I sat in my new, beautiful home overlooking the ocean, far away from the toxic environment of the city. Lily was playing in the garden outside, her laughter ringing through the warm air, healthy, happy, and safe.
There was a knock on my door. It was Arthur, carrying the final decree of absolute divorce.
"It’s over, Elena," he said, handing me the paperwork. "You have full custody. You recovered eighty percent of the stolen assets through the liquidation of their properties. You won."
"Thank you, Arthur," I said, signing the document with a decisive flourish.
As Arthur left, I received an alert on my tablet. It was a prison email system notification—a message from Mark.
I opened it out of curiosity. “Elena, please. I know you hate me. But there is one thing you need to know. The shell company... it wasn't started for Samantha Cruz. I met Samantha later. The shell company was created four years ago, before Lily was even born. Check the original creator's signature. I didn't steal that money for another woman. I stole it because someone told me Lily wasn't mine, and I wanted a backup plan.”
My breath hitched. I immediately opened the digital file of the original shell company incorporation documents that Arthur had sent me weeks ago. I scrolled past the names of Mark and Victoria, down to the very bottom, looking at the original witness and creator signature from four years ago.
The signature didn't belong to Mark. It didn't belong to Victoria.
It belonged to my own father—the man who had supposedly died five years ago and left me his entire estate, the man whose "death" had prompted me to start this entire empire.
He wasn't dead. He had faked his death, used my husband and my sister to drain my company from the shadows, and left me believing I was an orphan while he lived a secret life of luxury abroad.
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I stared at the signature, a chill running down my spine. The battle with my husband was over, but the true war for my family’s empire had only just begun. I looked out the window at Lily, picked up my phone, and called Arthur back.
"Arthur," I said, my eyes narrowing as I stared at the horizon. "Dig up my father’s grave. We need to see what’s actually inside that coffin."
