Chapter 17

Grey morning light spilled over the harbour’s choppy waves as we parked near the abandoned pier, police vehicles already lining the roadside. Plain‑clothed officers combed the weathered wooden planks, searching for any trace of Mara Kael after she’d left her car behind. The discarded note lay sealed inside an evidence bag: The board‑succession vote is still not over. The final trigger is set for tomorrow’s official hearing.

Ms. Hale joined us by the shoreline, her tablet open to new‑unlocked records. “We’ve run deeper checks on Mara’s history. She wasn’t only Gideon’s former clerk and the on‑call administrator that fatal highway night — she was also his secret half‑sister.”

That revelation knocked the breath from me. “His family? No one ever mentioned that.”

“They kept it hidden,” Ms. Hale explained. “Their mother worked as a Vance‑Industries housekeeper decades ago; Gideon helped Mara secure quiet, behind‑the‑scenes roles so she could support his plans without appearing linked to him. When Gideon was arrested, she inherited control of the Lira fund — and the unfinished plan he’d spent years preparing.”

Caelum stared out across the water, jaw tight. “What exactly is the ‘final trigger’ she intends to use tomorrow?”

“We don’t know yet,” Ms. Hale admitted. “But hospital security footage shows she slipped something into Elias’s drawer before she left — not just the envelope we found, a tiny encrypted USB drive. Elias later told a nurse he’d hidden it inside his cast, fearing she would return to take it back.”

We raced back to the city hospital, escorted by two uniformed officers. Elias was awake, propped up in bed, looking more worn down than the previous day. When we entered his private room, he gave a faint, weary nod.

“You’ve learned about Mara,” he said quietly.

“Gideon’s half‑sister,” Caelum confirmed. “What’s on that USB she left you? And what is she planning to do at tomorrow’s hearing?”

Elias shifted carefully, wincing as he tapped his plaster‑covered lower leg. “The drive contains manipulated audio files. She intends to play them during the board vote — recordings edited to sound like you, Caelum, bribed inspectors to cover‑up your father’s crash so you could seize the CEO position early. She also planted a falsified digital trail linking Zara to the bribe, claiming she married you only as part of the scheme.”

My stomach twisted. “She’ll try to make everyone believe we conspired together?”

“Exactly,” Elias said. “And there’s more. She’s managed to get a temporary guest pass for tomorrow’s boardroom. She’ll pose as an independent legal researcher. Once the false audio plays, she’ll call for an immediate emergency vote to disqualify you both, and push forward her own chosen replacement — a little‑known senior manager who has taken secret payments from the Lira fund for years.”

Caelum frowned. “Why leave the evidence‑drive with you?”

“Blackmail insurance,” Elias replied. “If things went wrong for her tomorrow, she planned to return here and threaten to leak its contents publicly unless I agreed to testify falsely on her behalf. But she underestimated me. I’ve had enough of being used as a pawn. I want to give you the drive — and a full truthful statement — to stop her.”

A nurse helped carefully peel back a small section of the outer edge of Elias’s leg cast. Tucked inside was a slim black USB stick. Caelum placed it securely inside an encrypted carry‑case we’d brought.

Before we left, Elias added one final warning: “She has one more hidden advantage. She found old internal emails showing that ten‑year‑ago board members were aware Gideon was pushing for changes — they chose to look away. If she feels cornered, she’ll threaten to expose every one of them, turning the whole board defensive and unwilling to support your side.”

Back at the penthouse that evening, we gathered around the study desk: Caelum, me, Ms. Hale, Diana and Rowan. We mapped tomorrow’s hearing plan. We would bring our genuine evidence — the crash dash‑cam footage, my mother’s eyewitness statement, Elias’s formal testimony, and the files from safety‑deposit box 417 — to counter Mara’s fake audio. But we also needed to anticipate her threat to reveal the old board’s past silence.

Several times during our planning, Caelum stood close beside me; once his hand rested lightly on my shoulder, his face turned toward mine, and for a second it seemed he might lean into a kiss. Then he pulled back, a quiet, thoughtful look in his grey eyes — still holding to our promise of slow, earned closeness, knowing we could not afford emotional distraction before the critical hearing.

“One more thing,” Ms. Hale said, pulling up a new alert on her tablet. “Our security team just intercepted a short, encrypted message sent from Mara’s hidden phone: If the false recording fails, activate the backup. We don’t know what that backup measure is.”

Silence settled over the room. We thought we had unravelled the full conspiracy when Gideon was arrested. Now we faced Mara, her forged evidence, her board‑blackmail plan — and an unknown final backup threat we could not yet identify. Tomorrow’s board hearing would decide not only Caelum’s inheritance claim, but whether the full truth about his father’s death would ever be allowed to come to light.