Chapter Seventeen. Already

Nobody moved for a time.

The woman stood inside the door looking at Ethan. Ethan stood across the room looking at her.. I stood between them trying to figure out what was happening.

"Who is she? " I asked.

Ethan did not answer. 

"Her name is Victoria, " he said finally. "She is my mother."

The room became very quiet.

My father stood up slowly. He looked at Victoria with an expression that was hard to understand. It was not surprise it was something

"You two know each other " I said, looking at my father and Victoria.

"A  long time ago " Victoria said, still looking at me. She was looking at me in a way that felt deliberate. "You have your grandmother's eyes, " she said softly.

"My grandmother, " I said.

"Your fathers mother, " she said. "We were friends before everything fell apart."

I looked at Ethan. 

For the time since I met Ethan Voss, he did not seem to know what to do next.

"This can wait until morning, " my father said quietly. "Everyone needs to rest. There is much to talk about tonight and not enough clarity to say it well."

Nobody argued.

One by one the room emptied.Everyone left. 

Then it was just me and Ethan again.

"You did not know, " I said.

 "About your mother and my family."

"No, " he said. He sat down for the first time. Ethan never just sat down. He was always standing, always ready. Sitting down meant he had nothing left to do tonight.

"What did you mean? " I asked, "when you said I was not who you thought I was."

He looked at me for a while.

"When I started investigating your uncle " he said, "I thought I understood your family. Your father, the company, you.. If my mother knew your grandmother if our families were connected before all this started then this is not just about a business deal or a disputed inheritance. It goes back further than that.

I sat down beside him.

Not across the room. Beside him. Close enough that I could feel the warmth of him next to me in the quiet.

"Are you afraid? " he asked.

I thought about it honestly.

"Yes, " I said. " I wasn’t afraid at the beginning, because I didn’t know, but knowing is harder in some ways."

He nodded, like he understood what I meant.

"For what it's worth " he said quietly "you are the strongest person I have met in a very long time."

I looked at him.

"You said you were surprised I did well at the dinner " I said.

"I was, " he said. "I did not expect you to handle yourself the way you did. I did not expect a lot of things about you."

The room was very quiet. The city was a hum somewhere far below.. We were sitting very close to each other.

His eyes dropped for a second then came back up.

I stopped breathing.

Then His phone rang.

We both went still.

He answered it without moving. His eyes stayed on mine for one second then he looked down at the phone.

I watched his face as he listened.

I watched the moment it changed.

He hung up.

He looked at me and said,

“My legal team just pulled the original foundation documents of Voss Holdings”, he said. “Sofia, one of the original co-founder of my  company- the man who built alongside my grandfather fifty years ago.”

“His name was Arthur Wren.”

I looked at him.

Arthur Wren.

My grandfather’s name.

“What are you saying,” I whispered.

“I’m saying,” your grandfather helped build Voss Holdings. That the trust he left you does not just hold money, it holds shares in my company. And whoever controls that trust, controls a part of everything I’ve built.

The room went silent.

Our grandfathers has built something together 

Which meant this was never just about my family or his company.

It had has always been about the both of us 

Long before we both existed.

“And somewhere along the way, the partnership dissolved. My grandfather bought your grandfather out. But your grandfather kept the shares inside the trust instead of selling them. He was holding them for you.

Then I thought about the letter my father tried to give me before Victoria walked in. The letter my grandfather had left with the trust documents for me when I was ready.

“The letter, ” I said., I stood up. “My father had the letter.

We went to my father’s room, he was asleep. The envelope was still in his pocket. I took it carefully and sat by the window and I opened it.

Ethan sat across me

The letter was three pages long. I read every word twice.

When I finished reading, I dropped it and sat still.

What does it say, “Ethan asked.

He set up the trust specifically to protect what he wanted to leave me. He wrote that the shares in the company were my inheritance. Not my father’s. Not anyone else’s. And he wrote that when the time came I would know what to do with them.”

He trusted a woman he had never met, “I said. He built All of this around someone he would never know.”

Then I looked at Ethan.

This man who had come into my life through a contract.

Who had known about me before I knew about myself.

Who has stood between me and everything coming at me without asking me to be grateful for it.

Our grandfather built something together fifty years ago.

And here we are.

“What happens now?” I asked.

“Now, Ethan said, ”we use the shares. If you choose to exercise your grandfather's stakes in Voss Holdings, you become a significant shareholder. Your uncle can not touch the trust without your consent. And he can not touch Voss Holdings without going through both of us.

“Both of us, I repeated.

And they way he said it was not about business at all.

My phone buzzed on the table between us.

We both looked at it. 

It was a message from my uncle.

I know about the letter Sofia.i know what your grandfather left you.And I know you’re sitting with Ethan Voss right now reading it. You have until tomorrow morning to make a decision. Walk away from Voss and hand me over the trust access quietly. Or I will release something that will destroy you both. Something neither of you can recover from.

I looked at Ethan.

He looked at me.

“He’s watching us, “I said.

Ethan stood up immediately and moved to the window. He looked at the street below without touching the curtain. Then he turned back slowly.

“He has someone inside. “Ethan said quietly. Someone in this building has been reporting to him. I looked around.

My mother. My father, Grace, Daven.Victoria.

One of them was not who they said they were.