Chapter Twelve: The Coastal Estate

Ethan did not answer Whitfield’s question right away. Instead, he pulled up a chair, sat across from the older man, and looked at the crumpled receipt still sitting on the desk between them.

“We stop guessing what his plan is,” Ethan said. “We go find it.”

Whitfield’s eyebrows rose. “You mean the coastal estate.”

“Marianne drove that direction hours before any of this started. If she was meeting Cassius there, or reporting to someone there, that is the closest thing to his real base we have found so far.” Ethan stood, already reaching for his jacket. “I want to see it before he has time to move again.”

“That is not a decision to make alone,” Whitfield said, standing as well, voice sharp with the same protective urgency Ethan had heard from him three days earlier. “You have already walked into one trap this morning.”

“Then bring Marcus’s team once Julius is secured,” Ethan said. “But I am not sitting in a waiting room while Cassius plans his next move against my grandfather. Not again.”

They left the office within the hour, Marcus rerouting two of his men from the hospital detail to meet Ethan and Whitfield at a rally point twenty minutes from the coastal properties, once Julius was confirmed settled and guarded at the new facility. The drive out of the city gave way slowly to open coastline, grey water stretching flat and endless beyond a stretch of tall iron fences and old money estates spaced far apart from one another, each one guarded by hedges and privacy that made the whole stretch feel deliberately hidden from the world.

“There,” Whitfield said, pointing toward a pale stone house set back from the road, gates closed, no visible vehicles in the circular drive. “That is the smaller of the two properties Cassius inherited. The larger estate is another mile south.”

Marcus’s car pulled up beside them at the rally point, and the former soldier studied the gate through binoculars for a long moment before lowering them. “No visible security. No cameras I can spot from here either, which is strange for a property this size.”

“Meaning it might not be occupied,” Ethan said.

“Or meaning whoever is inside does not expect visitors,” Marcus said. “Either way, I do not like walking into a quiet building. Quiet usually means someone wants you to feel safe right before you are not.”

They approached on foot, scaling a low section of the iron fence where the hedges grew thick enough to provide cover. The house, up close, looked less occupied than expected, curtains drawn, no sound coming from inside despite the row of expensive cars still visible through a side window in an attached garage.

Marcus tried the side door first, finding it unlocked, which made his jaw tighten with visible suspicion. “Unlocked doors do not happen by accident in houses like this.”

“Then we move carefully,” Ethan said.

Inside, the house was cold and still, furniture covered in white sheets in several of the rooms they passed, the unmistakable feeling of a place kept for occasional use rather than daily living. They found the study at the end of a long hallway, and it was there that Marcus stopped short, holding up a hand for silence.

Through the cracked door, Ethan could hear a voice, low and urgent, speaking into a phone.

“—I do not care what he thinks he found in your office, Marianne, that is not my concern anymore. Your usefulness ended the moment Whitfield’s team started searching your files.” A pause. “No. You do not get to negotiate that now. You made your choice weeks ago.”

Ethan’s stomach tightened. He recognised the voice immediately.

Cassius.

He was here. He had been here the entire time, not fleeing, not hiding, simply waiting, confident enough in his own preparation that a house with an unlocked door and no visible security had felt like sufficient protection.

Marcus signalled for them to wait, positioning himself near the door frame, weapon ready but lowered, listening for the right moment.

“—the board vote is in six hours,” Cassius continued, voice cold and businesslike now. “By the time Ethan Carter realises what happened to the twelve per cent, it will already be irrelevant. I will have secured enough additional votes through the Hensley and Cho families to make his position on the board meaningless regardless of what shares he legally holds. Let him keep his inheritance. I only need control, and control does not require majority ownership, only enough loyal votes in the right seats.”

Ethan’s blood ran cold. A board vote in six hours. Something Whitfield had not mentioned, something Cassius had clearly kept moving forward in complete secrecy while everyone chased kidnappings and forged documents and traitorous assistants, all of it a distraction from the real manoeuvre happening quietly in the background the entire time.

Whitfield’s face beside him had gone pale with the same realisation. “There is no board vote scheduled,” he whispered. “Not one I have record of.”

“Then he called an emergency session without informing us,” Ethan whispered back. “Which means he has enough support among the other members to bypass proper notification requirements entirely.”

Marcus shifted slightly, and a floorboard beneath his boot creaked, sharp and sudden in the quiet hallway.

The voice inside the study cut off immediately.

“I will call you back,” Cassius said quickly, and the line went dead.

Silence stretched for a long, tense moment. Then the study door opened fully, and Cassius stood there, still composed despite the surprise, looking at the three of them without the slightest flicker of alarm crossing his face.

“Cousin.” His voice carried the same infuriating calm from the hangar. “I confess, I did not expect you to find this address quite so quickly. Marianne’s tracks were meant to lead you somewhere else entirely.”

“Where is she,” Whitfield demanded.

“Gone,” Cassius said simply. “Her usefulness ended once your team started reviewing her files. I imagine she is somewhere far from here by now, considerably wealthier and considerably less inclined to answer any of your questions.”

Ethan stepped forward. “We heard you. The board vote. Six hours.”

Something flickered behind Cassius’s calm expression, brief but unmistakable, a man realising his private conversation had not been as private as he assumed. “Then you already know there is nothing left for you to do about it. The Hensley family has been unhappy with Julius’s leadership for years, quietly, patiently, waiting for the right opportunity. The Cho family owes me favours going back a decade. Between the two, and my existing support, I do not need your shares to control this company, Ethan. I only needed you distracted long enough that you would not think to stop this until it was already finished.”

“Julius will contest it,” Whitfield said sharply. “The moment he learns—”

“Julius is recovering from a kidnapping and a car chase this morning,” Cassius said, unbothered. “By the time he is well enough to contest anything formally, the vote will already be certified. Courts are exceedingly reluctant to overturn a properly conducted board decision after the fact, Mr Whitfield, as I am sure fifty years of practice has taught you far better than it has taught me.”

Ethan felt something cold and sharp settle into his chest, the realization crystallizing fully now. Every threat, every kidnapping, every forged document and betrayed loyalty over the last three days had never been the true battle at all. It had been theatre, expensive and dangerous theatre, designed entirely to occupy Ethan’s attention while the real war was won quietly in boardrooms and phone calls he never knew were happening.

“You used my grandfather as a distraction,” Ethan said slowly. “You put a gun to his head this morning not because you needed leverage. You needed time.”

“Both, actually,” Cassius said, almost pleasant about it. “I find it rarely hurts to accomplish two goals with one plan. Efficient use of resources is simply good business, cousin, something you might learn to appreciate once you accept how thoroughly you have already lost.”

Marcus’s hand tightened around his weapon. “Say the word, Mr Carter.”

Cassius did not so much as glance at the gun. “Shoot me, and you hand every board member watching this vote unfold exactly the narrative they need to distrust the Carter name permanently. Violence from an untested heir with no business experience, confirming every doubt they already carry about your fitness to lead. Go ahead, if you believe that serves you better than walking away right now.”

Ethan’s jaw tightened, every instinct screaming to close the distance between them, and every fragment of patience he had built over eighteen years of surviving worse men than Cassius holding him steady instead.

“Marcus,” Ethan said quietly. “Lower it.”

Marcus obeyed, though his eyes never left Cassius.

“Wise,” Cassius said. “You are learning faster than I expected.” He checked his watch, unhurried. “Six hours, Ethan. I suggest you spend them calling every board member you can reach, though I doubt it will change enough votes to matter. Or spend them at your grandfather’s bedside, saying whatever needs saying while he still has the strength to hear it. Either way, by evening, Carter Holdings will belong to someone who actually knows how to run it.”

He walked past them calmly, unhurried, and none of them stopped him, the threat of exposing violence hanging too heavy over any move Ethan might have made.

Ethan stood in the cold study long after Cassius’s car pulled away down the coastal road, Whitfield beside him already dialling numbers with increasingly frantic urgency, Marcus watching the empty driveway with the tense stillness of a man who hated having let an enemy walk free twice in one day.

“Whitfield,” Ethan said finally. “Get me a list of every board member. All of them. I do not care if it is the middle of their morning or the end of their patience. I need to know exactly how many votes we are actually short before I decide what I am willing to do about it.”

Whitfield lowered the phone slightly, his expression grim. “Mr Carter, I already reached one of the sympathetic board members while you were speaking with Cassius. She confirmed the emergency session is real, and confirmed something else you need to hear immediately.”

“What?”

“The vote is not simply to reassign your proxy shares,” Whitfield said slowly. “Cassius has added a second motion to the agenda, one requiring only a simple majority to pass. A motion to formally dispute your legitimacy as Julius’s heir, citing irregularities in the DNA verification process, irregularities his own people apparently planted sometime in the last three days.”

Ethan felt the ground shift beneath him all over again.

“If that motion passes,” Whitfield said quietly, “it will not simply cost you influence over the company, Ethan. It will legally strip you of your identity as Julius Carter’s grandson entirely, regardless of what the original test proved. And once that ruling is entered into corporate and legal record, undoing it could take years, if it can be undone at all.”