8: Alistair Holdings

Daphne's pov

The first thing I noticed when I walked into Alistair Holdings was the silence.

It wasn't the hush of people working. It was the kind that follows an unexpected visitor. Conversations stopped. Heads turned. A few employees traded whispers, then bent over their screens a little too quickly.

I pretended not to notice. I had expected this. Since the wedding, my name had become entertainment for people who knew nothing about my marriage. The runaway bride. The billionaire's daughter who had embarrassed two powerful families.

I tightened my grip on my handbag and headed for the elevators.

"Good morning, Miss Alistair."

A young woman hurried to meet me. "I'm Sandra, your father's executive assistant. He asked me to make sure you have everything you need. The board meeting begins in twenty minutes."

"Thank you, Sandra. Let's get started."

Upstairs, the desk outside my father's office had been cleared down to bare wood. Edward's desk. Someone had even wiped away the ring his coffee cup used to leave. I walked past it without slowing.

My father's office looked exactly as I remembered. Enormous windows. A polished desk. Awards and framed photographs crowding the shelves. One of them stopped me: Daddy's arm around my shoulders, and Gavin in front of us pulling a ridiculous face. He couldn't have been more than nine.

Daddy had called the night before from his bed to say his doctors had put him on rest while the tests continued. He'd complained for ten minutes. I'd threatened to confiscate his laptop. Eventually he'd agreed to let me stand in for him.

A folder waited on the desk, with papers authorizing me to sign for him and sit in on his meetings. I ran my thumb over his signature at the bottom. For years I had watched him run this company from behind that desk. Now I was going to sit in his chair.

Something fluttered in my chest. Excitement or nerves, probably both.

"Miss Alistair? The board is waiting."

The conference room went quiet when I walked in. Eight executives sat around the long table, several of whom had worked with my father for decades. Some greeted me warmly. Others offered polite nods. One man near the head of the table barely looked up.

Harold Whitmore. Late sixties, silver hair, a permanent frown, and the confidence of someone who hadn't been told no in years.

I took my father's seat. "Good morning, everyone."

"I must admit, I didn't expect you at today's meeting," Harold said, leaning back.

"My father is under his doctors' care. I'll be representing him until he returns."

"Yes, we've heard. Although I wonder whether this is the best time for you to take on more responsibility. Considering the circumstances of your recent wedding, I imagine you have quite enough personal matters to deal with."

A few executives shifted in their chairs.

I closed the folder. "Mr. Whitmore, are we here to discuss Alistair Holdings or my personal life?"

His face tightened. "Excuse me?"

"My father's health and my marriage aren't on today's agenda. If you have concerns about my ability to represent him, you're welcome to raise them professionally." I held his gaze. "Otherwise, I suggest we begin."

For a moment, he looked ready to argue. Then he picked up his papers. "Very well."

The meeting lasted two hours. Property acquisitions, construction timelines, a proposed partnership with an overseas investment firm. At first I was conscious of every movement I made. Gradually the nerves burned off. I'd grown up on dinner-table business talk. Daddy had always made sure I understood how his company worked, and I knew how to read a financial report and how to tell when someone was avoiding a question.

When Harold tried to rush through a budget increase, I stopped him. "Could you explain why the projected cost has gone up eighteen percent?"

He adjusted his glasses. "Material costs, mainly."

"Which materials?"

"Several imported components."

"Then I'd like a detailed breakdown before I approve it."

Another executive nodded. "That's reasonable. Procurement can prepare it."

I made a note. "Good. Let's move on."

Afterward, Sandra set a document in front of me, a release of funds for a development project. I checked the figures, read the supporting pages, and picked up the pen.

It hovered over the signature line. In my first life, I had let other people make my decisions. I had watched Edward control my money, steer my choices, and slowly shave away everyone who loved me.

I signed.

It was such a small thing. It made me smile anyway.

By lunchtime, the room had emptied, and I was back in my father's office with a stack of approvals.

A page stopped me. A transaction summary had been clipped to the wrong file. *Industrial generators.* The next page: *water filtration equipment.* Then a payment for a land survey.

I sat up. The approvals were months old, all under my father's authorization.

The drawer beside his desk wasn't locked. I noted that and didn't like it. Inside were neat rows of folders, and one with a small red seal and no title, only a handwritten reference number.

I opened it.

A purchase order for generators. A commercial water filtration system. A survey of a large property outside the city. An invoice for *protective barrier panels,* issued by a private research laboratory, not a construction supplier.

The same subsidiary account. The same authorization code. The same reference number on every page.

I read the specifications. The generators weren't ordinary backups. They were built to power a site for months without help. The filtration system was sized for far more people than any residential project we managed. The survey covered isolated land with no commercial development nearby and no obvious reason to buy it.

What exactly was my father building?

I flipped to the last page for the approval dates and read the first one twice. The earliest purchase order had been signed six months before my wedding. The survey followed soon after. Then the generators. Then the panels.

A chill crawled down my spine. Eighteen months before the world ended, my father had started buying generators.

Could he have known?

No. That was impossible. He had never mentioned anything like this in my first life. But then, I'd been so wrapped up in Edward and his family that I'd barely looked at what my father was doing.

I reached for my phone and stopped.

What would I say? *Daddy, why were you buying equipment for a disaster that hasn't happened yet?* He would demand to know how I knew, and I had no answer for him.

I put the pages back in their original order. Then I noticed a line on the inside cover, written in his careful hand.

*Do not circulate. Personal authorization only.*

I stared at it. He hadn't wanted these discussed openly. Why?

My phone buzzed. A message from Daddy.

*How was your first day? Don't tell me you've fired half my employees already.*

I smiled despite myself and typed back. *Not yet. But Mr. Whitmore is testing my patience.*

His answer came almost at once. *He's been testing mine for twenty years. Welcome to the company.*

I laughed quietly. Then my eyes went back to the folder, and the smile faded.

I slid it into my handbag. Whatever my father had been hiding, I would find out.

Because one question frightened me more than the apocalypse itself.

What had he discovered that made him start preparing for the end of the world, a year and a half before it came?