Chapter 4 - THE PHANTOM’S CALLThe room seemed to drop ten degrees as the voice echoed off the glass walls.
“Jonathan,” Eleanor said, her voice terrifyingly calm. “You’re dead. They pulled your signet ring out of the wreckage of that Gulfstream off Bangor.”
A low, throaty chuckle came through the encrypted line.
“A ring is cheap to forge, big sister, and a dead man has far more tax advantages than a living one. Did you like my little delivery? I wanted to make sure my daughter had the finest welcome Manhattan could offer—right in the shadow of your billion-dollar monument to corporate greed.”
Eleanor stood up slowly, her gaze fixed on the security monitor where Sarah Lin’s image was still frozen.
“Why?” Eleanor demanded, her voice cutting through the speaker like a razor blade. “Why leave an innocent baby in a trash bin? If you’re alive, if you’re playing your sick games, why target your own blood?”
“She isn't just my blood, El. She’s the key,” Jonathan’s tone shifted from playful to razor-sharp. “When our dear departed father set up the Montgomery Family Trust, he added a very specific clause written in blood and old money. The controlling shares—the fifty-one percent that actually runs this empire—cannot be inherited by a corporation, nor can they be split by surviving siblings. They pass automatically to the direct, living bloodline of the primary heir upon their twentieth year—or, under emergency restructuring clauses, to whoever legally adopts and protects the primary heir in the event of the parent's ‘permanent absence.’”
Eleanor felt the ground drop out from under her feet.
The Trust. The ultimate prize. For twelve years, she had fought tooth and nail, buying up minority shares, crushing hostile syndicates, and bleeding herself dry to maintain absolute control of Montgomery Enterprises.
And all this time, the controlling shares had been legally tethered to a baby girl currently sleeping in an incubator five floors down.
“You staged your own death,” Eleanor said, the pieces clicking together with terrifying clarity, “so you could hide out while building a shadow portfolio, and now you need someone to take the fall for the child while you execute the final hostile takeover.”
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“Oh, you always were the smart one,” Jonathan laughed softly. “And Sarah? Well, Sarah is just a very dedicated employee who realized that working for a winner pays better than working for a corpse. You have forty-eight hours, Eleanor, before the board learns about the existence of my daughter and initiates the emergency succession protocol. By then, I’ll own every brick of your precious tower.”
The line went dead with a sharp click.
