Lahat ng Kabanata ng Once Bitten, Twice Shy: Kabanata 11 - Kabanata 20

*If Gideon ever becomes my daughter's husband, the plan has already begun.*I sat on that park bench with the photograph still trembling in my hands, Harold beside me, the two of us wrapped in a silence neither of us seemed able to break first.Then the memory hit me.Milo telling me about a second document. Sealed. Locked behind a security key tied to my inheritance records. I had let that thread go cold while chasing everything else, and now, staring at my father's handwriting warning me about a plan already in motion, I understood I couldn't afford to leave it buried any longer."I need to go," I told Harold, folding the photograph back into the file with care. "Thank you for this. For all of it.""What will you do with it?""I don't know yet. But I can't leave it buried the way you did.""Elise." He caught my arm before I could stand, his eyes searching mine with something that looked like worry. "Be careful who you trust with what I just gave you."I nodded, though his warning me

"Gideon wasn't the only name on the list," Milo said, finishing the sentence he'd left hanging the night before. "Desmond Vale. Harold Whitfield. And a third name your father circled twice, like he had his own doubts about it.""Whose name?""It's smudged, water damage or age, I can't tell which. I need someone who sat in the room with your father during those final weeks. Someone who can confirm what these pages leave open to guessing.""Nathaniel Brooks.""If he's still alive, and if he'll talk to you."Finding him took three days.Nathaniel had vanished from every professional record the moment my father died, no forwarding firm, no updated license, no digital footprint beyond a single old business filing that led Milo to an address two hours outside the city, a modest house at the end of a gravel road that looked like it hadn't seen a visitor in years.I drove there alone, against Milo's advice, because I needed to see this man's face when he answered my questions, not hear his vo

"There's more," Nathaniel said, sliding the laptop back toward himself once I nodded that I was ready. "I want you to see all of it before you decide what any of it means."He opened folder after folder, each one a piece of the same picture. Notes on my voting rights and how they would shift once my father died. A breakdown of my personal habits, who I trusted, who I called when something went wrong, which friendships had faded over the years and which had stayed close enough to matter."He researched my friendships," I said, my voice flat with disbelief. "Who I still talk to. Who I don't.""He researched everything," Nathaniel said. "How much control you'd hold over the company the moment your father passed. What kind of person you were likely to be as a widow's daughter left in charge of a fortune. Whether you'd fight for control or hand it to someone you trusted.""And he decided I'd hand it over.""The notes suggest he had good reason to believe it. You were raised to trust the pe

"I believe this audit deliberately left something out."Nathaniel let the words sit in the room for a moment before he opened the folder wider and turned it so the whole table could see."These are transfer records from the three divisions Gideon claims suffered losses," he said. "Look at the dates next to each withdrawal. Every one of them happened within days of a corresponding deposit into a company called Ridgeline Capital Partners."He slid a second page across the table."Ridgeline is a holding company. Its registered agent shares an address with two other entities already connected to this investigation, both linked to a man named Harold Whitfield, once head of this company's operations division."A murmur moved through the room, low and uneasy."The money didn't disappear because of interference," Nathaniel continued. "It was moved out on purpose, timed to coincide with decisions Elise questioned, so the losses would land on her name instead of the people who caused them."Fos

My phone rang before I'd even set it down from our last call."Elise, I opened it."Naomi's voice shook, thin and fast, nothing like the composed woman who'd handed me a flash drive on my porch weeks ago."What's inside?""Financial documents. Transfer authorizations. My signature on every single page, dated across the last two years, tied to accounts I've never seen before tonight." A breath, ragged, close to breaking. "He built an entire paper trail with my name on it, Elise. If your investigation reaches these transactions, I'm the one who goes to prison. Not him.""You're sure it's your signature?""It's close enough to pass. The way Gideon's forgery of yours passed, until you looked hard enough to see the difference. I know my own handwriting, Elise. This isn't a mistake. This is a plan."I gripped the phone tighter, my mind already racing ahead to what came next."What did you do?""I went back to him. Told him I was scared, that I'd seen the folder and didn't understand what he